rable moment, and rips Mr. B.'s bowels open. He is
tried for murder, with evidence sufficient to hang a dozen men; and, to
the astonishment of even the Westerns themselves, he is acquitted. These
facts occurred not many years since, and they were narrated to me by a
gentleman who was at the party.

When two members of the Legislature disgraced the halls at Washington,
by descending into the political arena with pistols and bowie-knives,
and there entering into deadly conflict, were they not two Western
members? Now, what do these occurrences prove? Certainly not that all
Westerns are bloodthirsty, for many of them are the most kind, quiet,
and amiable men I have ever met; but, when taken in connexion with the
free use of the bowie-knife, they afford strong evidence that there is a
general and extraordinary recklessness of human life; and surely, common
sense and experience would both endorse the assertion, that habituating
men to bloody disputes or fatal accidents has a tendency to harden both
actors and spectators into utter indifference. And what is the whole of
the Western river navigation but one daily--I might almost say,
continual--scene of accidents and loss of life, tending to nourish those
very feelings which it is the duty of every government to use all
possible means to allay and humanize?

The heartless apathy with which all classes of society, with scarce
individual exceptions, speak of these events is quite revolting to a
stranger, and a manifest proof of the injurious moral effect of
familiarizing people with such horrors. The bowie-knife, the revolver,
and the river accidents, mutually act and react upon each other, and no
moral improvement can reasonably be expected until some great change be
effected. Government can interfere with the accidents;--deadly weapons
are, to a certain extent, still necessary for self-protection. Let us
hope, then, that something will ore long be done to prevent disasters
pregnant with so many evils to the community, and reflecting so strongly
on the United States as a nation.[S] Having gone off at a tangent, like
a boomerang, I had better, like the same weapon, return whence I
started--in military language, "as you was."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote P: On the Mississippi a cord contains one definite quantity,
being a pile 1 feet high, 4 feet broad, and 8 feet long, and does not
vary in size in the same absurd manner as it does in various parts of
England: the price paid is f