Green Mountain Freeman

HOW TO DEAL WITH A KENTUCKIAN

The late celebrated Mr. Clay once told the following anecdote to a friend of ours:

Traveling in early manhood, in a public conveyance in a south-eastern State, he found himself in company of three other persons, a lady and gentleman, her husband, and of a person muffled up in a cloak, whose countenance was concealed, and who appeared to be indulging in a tete-a-tete with Morpheus. Suddenly a big, brawny Kentuckian got into the coach, smoking a cigar, and frowned fiercely around, as much as to say, "I'm half horse half alligator: the valler flower of the forest, all brimstone but the head and ears, and that's aquafortis." In fact, he looked as savage as a meat axe, and puffed forth huge volumes of smoke, without reference to the company within, especially the lady, who manifested certain timid symptoms of annoyance.
Presently, after some whispering, the gentleman with her, in the politest accents, requested the stranger not to smoke as it annoyed his companion. The fellow answered, "I reckon I've paid for my place. I'll smoke as much as I darn please, and all hell shan't stop me, no how." With that he looked dangerous, and rolled his eyes round as fiercely as a rattlesnake. It was evident that he had no objection to a quarrel, and that, if it occurred, it was likely to lead to a deadly struggle. The young man who had spoken to him shrank back and was silent. Clay felt his gallantry aroused. He considered for a moment whether he should interfere, but experienced a natural reluctance to draw upon himself the brutal violence of his gigantic adversary. In that lawless country, he knew his life might be sacrificed unavenged. He knew himself physically unequal to the contest, and he thought, after all, it was not his business to Quixotically to take up another man's quarrel. Feeling pity for the insulted, and disgust towards the insulter, he determined to take no notice; when, very quietly indeed,

the cloaked figure in the corner assumed an upright position, and the mantle was suffered to fall from it without effort or excitement. The small but sinewy frame of a man, plainly dressed in a tightly buttoned frock-coat, with nothing remarkable about his appearance, was seen, and a pair of bright gray eyes sought the fierce optics of the ferocious Kentuckian. Without a word this "lay figure" passed his hand under his collar at the back of his neck, and slowly and deliberately pulled forth a long, extremely long, and glittering knife from its sheath in that singular place. "Stranger," he said, "my name is Colonel James Bowie, well known in Arkansas and Louisiana, and if you don't put that cigar out of the window in a quarter of a minute I'll put this knife through your bowels, as sure as death." Clay said he never forgot in after life the expression of the colonel's eyes at that moment. The predominant impression made upon him was the certainty of the threat being fulfilled, and apparently the same conviction impressed itself ere long upon the offender. During two or three seconds his eyes met those of Bowie. His was the weaker and he quailed. With a curse he tore the cigar from between his teeth, and flung it, scowling down-cast out of the window. Upon this, Col. James Bowie as deliberately replaced his long knife in its eccentric hiding place, and, without saying a word to anyone else or even vouchsafing a glance at anyone re-folded his cloak around him, and did not utter another syllable to the end of the journey.-New Quarterly Review