Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on shore.
Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class ho-The House Beautiful
tels in the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were “palaces.” To a few people living in New Orleans and WE TOOK PASSAGE IN A CINCINNATI BOAT for New Orleans; or St. Louis, they were not magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; on a Cincinnati boat—either is correct; the former is the but to the great majority of those populations, and to the eastern form of putting it, the latter the western.
entire populations spread over both banks between Baton Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steam-Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the boats were “magnificent,” or that they were “floating pal-citizen’s dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.
aces,”—terms which had always been applied to them; terms Every town and village along that vast stretch of double which did not over-express the admiration with which the river-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, man-people viewed them.
sion,—the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citi-214
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain zen. It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with paling etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey’s fence painted white—in fair repair; brick walk from gate to
“Lady’s Book,” with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure door; big, square, two-story “frame” house, painted white women with mouths all alike—lips and eyelids the same and porticoed like a Grecian temple—with this difference, size—each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals from under her dress and letting-on to be half of her foot.
were a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted; Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with iron knocker; brass door knob—discolored, for lack of pol-pipe passing through a board which closes up the discarded ishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; open-good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over ing out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen—in some in-the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural stances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany cen-size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to ter-table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade—standing on resemble the originals—which they don’t. Over middle of a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the mantel, engraving—Washington Crossing the Delaware; on young ladies of the house, and called a lamp-mat; several the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-light-books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness, accord-ning crewels by one of the young ladies—work of art which ing to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them, would have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he Tupper, much penciled; also, “Friendship’s Offering,” and could have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of
“Affection’s Wreath,” with their sappy inanities illustrated in it. Piano—kettle in disguise—with music, bound and un-die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; “Alonzo and Melissa:” bound, piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague; maybe “Ivanhoe:” also “Album,” full of original “poetry” of Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed; two Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is or three goody-goody works— “Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,” Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we 215
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain met; Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o’er that Brow a family in oil: papa holding a book (“Constitution of the Shadow fling; Hours there were to Memory Dearer; Long, United States”); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the Ocean Wave, a fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it, ro-holl on, the other beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both sim-silver moo-hoon, guide the trav-el-lerr his way, etc. Tilted pering up at mamma, who simpers back. These persons all pensively against the piano, a guitar—guitar capable of play-fresh, raw, and red—apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt ing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start.
frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, Frantic work of art on the wall—pious motto, done on the old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded from a background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass grasses: progenitor of the “God Bless Our Home” of mod-French clock dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in ern commerce. Framed in black moldings on the wall, other corpsy-white wax. Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the works of arts, conceived and committed on the premises, by shelves occupied chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, dis-the young ladies; being grim black-and-white crayons; land-posed with an eye to best effect: shell, with the Lord’s Prayer scapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-carved on it; another shell—of the long-oval sort, narrow, geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice; name of crimi-straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to end—
nal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon Cross-portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell ing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-had Washington’s mouth, originally—artist should have built plates, Trumbull’s Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from to that. These two are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip Gibraltar. Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Re-to New Orleans and the French Market. Other bric-a-brac: turn of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the Californian “specimens”—quartz, with gold wart adhering; 216
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sun-Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from day-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize uncle who crossed the Plains; three ‘alum’ baskets of various could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally colors—being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes grouped together—husband sitting, wife standing, with hand of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style—works of art on his shoulder—and both preserving, all these fading years, which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist’s brisk “Now duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; con-smile, if you please!” Bracketed over what-not—place of spe-vention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; cial sacredness—an outrage in water-color, done by the young painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment—drops its niece that came on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rab-she might have repented of this in time. Horse-hair chairs, bit—limbs and features merged together, not strongly de-horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding from under you. Win-fined; pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-dow shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and ruined castles board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and stenciled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins dependent operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, rag carpets; bedsteads of the ‘corded’ sort, with a sag in the and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed middle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed—
portico at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint-bottomed in the distance—that came in later, with the photograph; all rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size, veneered these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed—metal in-frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly—
dicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers.
vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and 217
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain no visitor likely to come along who has ever seen one.
Then the Bridal Chamber—the animal that invented that That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way idea was still alive and unhanged, at that day—Bridal Cham-from the suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis.
ber whose pretentious flummery was necessarily overawing When he stepped aboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing citizen.
new and marvelous world: chimney-tops cut to counterfeit Every state-room had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and a spraying crown of plumes—and maybe painted red; pilot-perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with there was even a washbowl and pitcher, and part of a towel white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns which could be told from mosquito netting by an expert—
topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy though generally these things were absent, and the shirt-symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long row of sta-boiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor arm-tionary bowls in the barber shop, where were also public chairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white ‘cabin;’ porcelain towels, public combs, and public soap.
knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving pat-Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you terns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching have her in her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and overhead all down the converging vista; big chandeliers ev-comfortable, and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with ery little way, each an April shower of glittering glass-drops; a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cin-lovely rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored glaz-cinnati steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over—only ing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn, resplendent inside; for she was ably officered in all departments except tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle! In the the steward’s.
ladies’ cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush, But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers.
about the counterpart of the most complimented boat of 218
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain the old flush times: for the steamboat architecture of the only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under-the-hill has West has undergone no change; neither has steamboat fur-not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect—
niture and ornamentation undergone any.
judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign tourists—it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small, Chapter 39
straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the old keel-boating and early steamboating times—
Manufactures
plenty of drinking, carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, and Miscreants
among the riff-raff of the river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been attractive.
WHERE THE RIVER, IN THE VICKSBURG REGION, used to be Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its charms: corkscrewed, it is now comparatively straight—made so by
“At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved cut-off; a former distance of seventy miles is reduced to thirty-by bluffs, as they call the short intervals of high ground. The five. It is a change which threw Vicksburg’s neighbor, Delta, town of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high Louisiana, out into the country and ended its career as a spots. The contrast that its bright green hill forms with the river town. Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by a dismal line of black forest that stretches on every side, the vast sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees—a growth abundant growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and orange, the which will magnify itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and copious variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, completely hide the exiled town.
all make it appear like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war furthest point to the north at which oranges ripen in the fame, and reached Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-open air, or endure the winter without shelter. With the cities—for Baton Rouge, yet to come, is not on a hill, but exception of this sweet spot, I thought all the little towns 219
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and villages we passed wretched-looking in the extreme.” of clear water; and around each box, salt and other proper Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railw ays stuff was packed; also, the ammonia gases were applied to now, and is adding to them—pushing them hither and thither the water in some way which will always remain a secret to into all rich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to me, because I was not able to understand the process. While her. And like Vicksburg and New Orleans, she has her ice-the water in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir or factory: she makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and two with a stick occasionally—to liberate the air-bubbles, I Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could think. Other men were continually lifting out boxes whose wear it. But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited contents had become hard frozen. They gave the box a single one of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar dip into a vat of boiling water, to melt the block of ice free regions might look like when lugged into the edge of the trop-from its tin coffin, then they shot the block out upon a plat-ics. But there was nothing striking in the aspect of the place. It form car, and it was ready for market. These big blocks were was merely a spacious house, with some innocent steam ma-hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In certain of them, big bou-chinery in one end of it and some big porcelain pipes running quets of fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-here and there. No, not porcelain—they merely seemed to in; in others, beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other be; they were iron, but the ammonia which was being breathed pretty objects. These blocks were to be set on end in a plat-through them had coated them to the thickness of your hand ter, in the center of dinner-tables, to cool the tropical air; with solid milk-white ice. It ought to have melted; for one did and also to be ornamental, for the flowers and things impris-not require winter clothing in that atmosphere: but it did not oned in them could be seen as through plate glass. I was told melt; the inside of the pipe was too cold.
that this factory could retail its ice, by wagon, throughout Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quantities, at and two feet long, and open at the top end. These were full six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit. This 220
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain being the case, there is business for ice-factories in the North; Natchez and these other river towns become manufacturing for we get ice on no such terms there, if one take less than strongholds and railway centers.
three hundred and fifty pounds at a delivery.
Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity of 6,000
topic which I heard—which I overheard—on board the Cin-spindles and 160 looms, and employs 100 hands. The cinnati boat. I awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull con-Natchez Cotton Mills Company began operations four years fusion of voices in my ears. I listened—two men were talk-ago in a two-story building of 50 x 190 feet, with 4,000
ing; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I looked out spindles and 128 looms; capital $105,000, all subscribed in through the open transom. The two men were eating a late the town. Two years later, the same stockholders increased breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around.
their capital to $225,000; added a third story to the mill, They closed up the inundation with a few words—having increased its length to 317 feet; added machinery to increase used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintance-the capacity to 10,300 spindles and 304 looms. The com-ship-breeder—then they dropped into business. It soon tran-pany now employ 250 operatives, many of whom are citi-spired that they were drummers—one belonging in Cincin-zens of Natchez. “The mill works 5,000 bales of cotton an-nati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of nually and manufactures the best standard quality of brown movement and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it shirtings and sheetings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards their religion.
of these goods per year.”* A close corporation—stock held
“Now as to this article,” said Cincinnati, slashing into the at $5,000 per share, but none in the market.
ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange, blade, “it’s from our house; look at it—smell of it—taste it.
yet were to be expected; but I was not expecting to live to see Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time—no hurry—make it thorough. There now—what do you say?
*New Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 Aug, 1882.
221
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain butter, ain’t it. Not by a thundering sight—it’s oleomarga-
“Yes, it’s a first-rate imitation, that’s a certainty; but it ain’t rine! Yes, sir, that’s what it is—oleomargarine. You can’t tell the only one around that’s first-rate. For instance, they make it from butter; by George, an expert can’t. It’s from our house.
olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can’t We supply most of the boats in the West; there’s hardly a tell them apart.”
pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right
“Yes, that’s so,” responded Cincinnati, “and it was a tip-along— jumping right along is the word. We are going to top business for a while. They sent it over and brought it have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are back from France and Italy, with the United States custom-going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can’t find an house mark on it to indorse it for genuine, and there was no ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke up the game—
Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities.
of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling Why, we are turning out oleomargarine now by the thou-impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn’t stand the raise; had sands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole to hang up and quit.”
country has got to take it—can’t get around it you see. But-
“Oh, it did, did it? You wait here a minute.” ter don’t stand any show—there ain’t any chance for compe-Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, tition. Butter’s had its day—and from this out, butter goes and takes out the corks—says:
to the wall. There’s more money in oleomargarine than—
“There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, why, you can’t imagine the business we do. I’ve stopped in inspect the labels. One of ‘m’s from Europe, the other’s never every town from Cincinnati to Natchez; and I’ve sent home been out of this country. One’s European olive-oil, the other’s big orders from every one of them.”
American cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell ‘m apart? ‘Course you And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the can’t. Nobody can. People that want to, can go to the ex-same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said—
pense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back—
222
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain it’s their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of I did not catch the answer.
that. We turn out the whole thing—clean from the word go—
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific in our factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything.
episodes of the war—the night-battle there between Farragut’s Well, no, not labels: been buying them abroad—get them fleet and the Confederate land batteries, April 14th, 1863; dirt-cheap there. You see, there’s just one little wee speck, es-and the memorable land battle, two months later, which lasted sence, or whatever it is, in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give eight hours—eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stub-it a smell, or a flavor, or something—get that out, and you’re born fighting—and ended, finally, in the repulse of the Union all right—perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of forces with great slaughter.
oil you want to, and there ain’t anybody that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little Chapter 4O
particle out—and we’re the only firm that does. And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect—undetectable! We Castles and Culture
are doing a ripping trade, too—as I could easily show you by my order-book for this trip. Maybe you’ll butter everybody’s BATON ROUGE WAS CLOTHED IN FLOWERS, like a bride—no, bread pretty soon, but we’ll cotton-seed his salad for him from much more so; like a greenhouse. For we were in the abso-the Gulf to Canada, and that’s a dead-certain thing.” lute South now—no modifications, no compromises, no half-Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two way measures. The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and the table, Cincinnati said—
huge snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very
“But you have to have custom-house marks, don’t you?
sweet, but you want distance on it, because it is so powerful.
How do you manage that?”
They are not good bedroom blossoms—they might suffo-223
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain cate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the South at last; without, pretending to be what they are not—should ever for here the sugar region begins, and the plantations—vast have been built in this otherwise honorable place; but it is green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood un-together in the middle distance—were in view. And there dergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day, when it was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
would have been so easy to let dynamite finish what a chari-And at this point, also, begins the pilot’s paradise: a wide table fire began, and then devote this restoration-money to river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore the building of something genuine.
to shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol and no monopoly of them. Here is a picture from the adver-building; for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle tisement of the “Female Institute” of Columbia; Tennessee.
would ever have been built if he had not run the people The following remark is from the same advertisement—
mad, a couple of generations ago, with his medieval romances.
“The Institute building has long been famed as a model of The South has not yet recovered from the debilitating influ-striking and beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with ence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and its resemblance to the old castles of song and story, with its their grotesque “chivalry” doings and romantic juvenilities towers, turreted walls, and ivy-mantled porches.” still survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already per-Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic ceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth-century as keeping hotel in a castle.
smell of cotton-factories and locomotives; and traces of its By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and inflated language and other windy humbuggeries survive well enough; but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of along with it. It is pathetic enough, that a whitewashed castle, maudlin Middle-Age romanticism here in the midst of the with turrets and things—materials all ungenuine within and plainest and sturdiest and infinitely greatest and worthiest of 224
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain all the centuries the world has seen, it is necessarily a hurtful to kill him. This was at the fair grounds, and O’Connor told thing and a mistake.
Mabry that it was not the place to settle their difficulties.
Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky “Fe-Mabry then told O’Connor he should not live. It seems that male College.” Female college sounds well enough; but since Mabry was armed and O’Connor was not. The cause of the the phrasing it in that unjustifiable way was done purely in difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some prop-the interest of brevity, it seems to me that she-college would erty from Mabry to O’Connor. Later in the afternoon Mabry have been still better—because shorter, and means the same sent word to O’Connor that he would kill him on sight.
thing: that is, if either phrase means anything at all—
This morning Major O’Connor was standing in the door of
“The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by educa-the Mechanics’ National Bank, of which he was president.
tion, and by sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sen-General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay timent, and with the exception of those born in Europe were Street on the opposite side from the bank. O’Connor stepped born and raised in the south. Believing the southern to be into the bank, got a shot gun, took deliberate aim at General the highest type of civilization this continent has seen,” the Mabry and fired. Mabry fell dead, being shot in the left young (long one) [Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted side. As he fell O’Connor fired again, the shot taking effect by the advertiser:
in Mabry’s thigh. O’Connor then reached into the bank and got another shot gun. About this time Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., KNOXVILLE, Tenn., October 19.—This morning a few son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street, un-minutes after ten o’clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Tho-seen by O’Connor until within forty feet, when the young mas O’Connor, and Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., were killed in a man fired a pistol, the shot taking effect in O’Connor’s right shooting affray. The difficulty began yesterday afternoon by breast, passing through the body near the heart. The instant General Mabry attacking Major O’Connor and threatening Mabry shot, O’Connor turned and fired, the load taking 225
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain effect in young Mabry’s right breast and side. Mabry fell man and driven his knife into another. The Professor armed pierced with twenty buckshot, and almost instantly himself with a double-barreled shot gun, started out in search O’Connor fell dead without a struggle. Mabry tried to rise, of his brother-in-law, found him playing billiards in a sa-but fell back dead. The whole tragedy occurred within two loon, and blew his brains out. The “Memphis Avalanche” minutes, and neither of the three spoke after he was shot.
reports that the Professor’s course met with pretty general General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body. A approval in the community; knowing that the law was pow-bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buck-erless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to protect shot, and another was wounded in the arm. Four other men him, he protected himself.
had their clothing pierced by buckshot. The affair caused About the same time, two young men in North Carolina great excitement, and Gay Street was thronged with thou-quarreled about a girl, and ‘hostile messages’ were exchanged.
sands of people. General Mabry and his son Joe were acquit-Friends tried to reconcile them, but had their labor for their ted only a few days ago of the murder of Moses Lusby and pains. On the 24th