While in one of the interior counties to-day I stood beside the graves of six members of one household. The father and his five sons all fell in one sanguinary family feud. It seems an ill feeling had long existed between two families named respectively Frost and Coates. Though they frequently indulged in small skirmishes—from which black eyes, bloody noses, or slit ears were the principal trophies borne away—they had never met when their full forces were under arms. And for the happy hour that would bring about such a meeting, each party looked forward with interest, if not impatience. A day arrived at last, full of promise. It was an election day. Each party expected the other out in strength, with furbished arms, and prepared themselves accordingly. They took the street, resolved, that— “Ere the bat had flown His cloistered flight: ere to black Hecate’s summons The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Had rung night’s yawning peal, there would be done A deed of dreadful note.” Two planets keep not their motion in one sphere, nor could two quarrelsome families move long in a small village, or freely patronize the same groggeries without a collision. Towards evening they met, some mounted and more on foot, and from low jests amongst themselves respecting each other’s lack of prowess upon former occasions, the controversy soon reached the point of positive contradictions. As the “lie direct” is equivalent to a well-developed kick to your average fighting man, hostilities soon commenced. [Illustration: LIVELY WORK.] The Coates family opened the engagement with a brisk fusilade, and at the first fire the gray-bearded patriarch of the Frost faction went down with all his imperfections on his head. The firing now became general. “From rank to rank, the volleyed thunder flew.” Neutral parties fled from the street, and for a time transacted business with “closed doors.” The report of the firearms frightened the horse of a disinterested gentleman, who was riding through the village, and despite his efforts to control the animal, it dashed directly between the belligerent parties. The fighting men, however, did not slacken fire on his account, but blazed away without seeming to notice or care whether the agitated stranger went down in the general _melee_ or not. Fortunately, the gentleman escaped injury, but it was certainly more by chance than good guidance. It is said so rapid was the fire that a steady blaze seemed issuing from the muzzle of their weapons. When the smoke of battle raised, five of the Coates family were lying dead. On the other side, Frost and one of his sons were killed, and a son-in-law mortally wounded. People say the funeral was a saddening spectacle. Amongst the mourners were mothers, daughters, sisters and wives. But the end was not yet.