With coarser illustrations of the universal feeling the public prints have been crowded—stories of ear cuttings and shootings, and the like. Doubtless many of these stories were exaggerated; for even in Mississippi murder is not practiced with as much safety as the other fine arts; but no man could mingle in the community and not be convinced that the feeling was there, and that only prudence restrained its exercise. A railroad conductor was possessed with some delusion about my ability to help to his appointment as post-office agent, and he accordingly exhausted all his arts to entertain. The burden of his talk was “the blasted, imperdent nigger.” “Just think, sah, down here, the other day, at ——, a nigger sergeant ordered his men to shoot me. I never heard of it till I’d got twenty miles away, or I’d a raised a little speck of Jerusalem in that nigger camp. What did he want me shot for, sah? Why this was the way of it. I was writin’ on a platform car, where a d——d nigger guard was a trampin’ back and forrard, and says I, ‘Can’t you keep still thar, you nigger; don’t you see you’re a shakin’ the car?’ The black scoundrel never said a word, but kept on trampin’ his beat. I spoke to him again, kinder sharp, but he didn’t mind me no more nor if he’d never heerd me. Finally I couldn’t stand it no longer, and broke out: ‘G—d d——n your black heart, you dirty Yankee nigger, I’d just like to cut your throat from ear to ear for your infernal impudence.’ At that he walked off to the sergeant and kept a whisperin’ till I got ready to start. But I heerd afterward that the cowardly nigger sergeant told him to stand his ground and shoot me if I interfered with him. Just think of the nigger impudence we’ve got to bear, sah!” In a crowded bar-room, among a group of cronies who evidently looked on him as the oracle, swaggered a “hotel-keeper,” whose guests were taken in and fleeced, at a point on the railroad between Jackson and New Orleans. He was boasting of his success with the “cussed free niggers.” “We’ve got a Provo’ in our town that settles their hash mighty quick. He’s a downright high-toned man, that Provo’, if he is a Yankee. I sent a nigger to him, the other day, who was sassy when he came into my office, and said he wouldn’t work for me unless he pleased. He tucked him up, guv him twenty lashes, and rubbed him down right smart with salt, for having no visible means of support. That evening I saw Tom, and asked him whether he’d rather come home. ‘Bress ye, yes, massa,’ says Tom. ‘But Tom,’ I told him, ‘I’ll take that old paddle of mine with the holes in it, and paddle you soundly, if I think you deserve it.’ ‘Bress you, massa, Tom likes dat all do time better dan dis.’ That’s a downright high-toned officer, I tell ye, that Provo’ of our’n!”