Effects of Intemperance.—A young man, the only male representative of a highly respectable family, was killed on Saturday last in Jefferson co., Mississippi, by a very harmless youth on whom the wretched inebriate was making a mortal assault. The facts are briefly these: The young man who has fallen, began, in February last, to give signs of mania potu. On the 22d of February he took out a licence of marriage, embracing the name of a young lady residing near him. He asked a clergyman to officiate on the next Wednesday at his marriage, and also invited a numerous wedding company. At a ball the same evening, in the midst of a large assemblage, he read aloud, mounted on a table, his marriage license. From this public proclamation the lady received the first intelligence about the contemplated wedding, which had been arranged by the maniac lover. On the day appointed by him for solemnizing the rites of matrimony, he proceeded, despite the efforts of his friends, and at the risk of one person's life who endeavored to prevent him, to the residence of his imagined betrothed. By kind means however he was induced to return home and was soon in the care of a physician who succeeded in restoring him to a temporary soundness of intellect. On the 2d of June, the object of his maniacal devotion was led to the hymeneal altar by the young man who has been obliged, in self-defence, to destroy the maniac's life. At the time of the marriage, and ever since, he had been under the influence of the mania induced by a recurrence to the phrensying bowl, uttering threats against the life of the young man who has killed him. On the fatal day, he went armed with knife and pistol to execute his mad purpose. His destroyer had been warned, and was prepared to defend himself with rifle and shot gun, and as he entered his gate, he fired his rifle and wounded his foe in the leg, at which his horse started and threw him; but recovering and again advancing, he received the contents of one barrel of the shot gun in his abdomen—but still urged on by the fiend within him, with pistol armed, he received the contents of the second barrel in his head, and he fell a lifeless, mangled corpse at the door of the assaulted and unfortunate youth, whom he had resolved to destroy.—Natchez Cold water man.
