with these our backward kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize
ourselves to the extent of _going back_ and getting an eighteenth
century point of view."

As regards the valuation of human life, what was that point of view?

The late Professor Shaler of Harvard, himself a Southerner, one time
explained the prevalence of manslaughter among southern gentlemen. His
remarks apply with equal truth to our mountaineers, for they, however
poor they may be in worldly goods, are by no means "poor white trash,"
but rather patricians, like the ragged but lofty chiefs and clansmen of
old Scotland.--

"Nothing so surprises the northern people as the fact that southern
men of good estate will, for what seems to the distant onlooker
trifling matters of dispute, proceed to slay each other. Nothing so
gravely offends the characteristic southern man as the incapacity
of his brethren of northern societies to perceive that such action
is natural and consistent with the rules of gentlemanly behavior.
The only way to understand these differences of opinion is by a
proper consideration of the history of the moral growth of these
diverse peoples.

"The Southerner has retained and fostered--in a certain way
reinstated--the medieval estimate as to the value of life. In the
opinion of those ages it was but lightly esteemed; it was not a
supreme good for which almost all else was to be sacrificed, but
something to be taken in hand and put in risk in the pursuit of
manly ideals.

"Modernism has worked to intensify the passion for existence until
those who are the most under its dominion cannot well conceive how
a man, except for some supreme duty to which he is pledged by
altruistic motives, can give up his own life or take that of his
neighbor. If these people of to-day will but perceive that the
characteristic Southerner has preserved the motives of two
centuries ago, if they will but inform themselves as to the state
of mind on this subject which prevailed in the epoch when those
motives were shaped in men, they will see that their judgment is
harsh and unreasonable. It is much as if they judged the actions of
Englishmen of the seventeenth century by the changed standards of
to-day.

"Nor will it be altogether reasonable to condemn the lack of regard
of life which we find in the southern gentl