It is needless to state that this affair was heralded to the world as a Ku-Klux murder, and as the parties wore uniforms, and affected the characterization, some doubt touching the integrity of the announcement may have existed in the minds of those best acquainted with the facts. CHAPTER XVII. A MORAL POINTED. A Problem for the Phrenologists--"Self-Preservation is [said to be] the First Law of Life"--A Mooted Question put at Rest--Experiments in Metaphysics--An Anecdote Dealing with the Characteristics of some People--Another--Peculiarities of the Caucasian--Ditto of the African--An "Awakening" among the Children of the New Abrahamic Covenant--"Brudder Jones's Preechin'"--What it Wrought--Unpleasant Truths--Sins of Omission and Commission--The Pale-Faced Settlers in Distress--An "Artifice" of Retrenchment--Eloquent Discourse--Nineteenthly, and what followed--K. K. K. _redivivus_--"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching, etc."--A Break for Tall Timber--The Best Time on Record. Whether it is located in the brain, or has its seat in that sentient organ of the body which physiologists indicate as the seat of life, we are left to conjecture; but it is certain that there exists somewhere in the anatomy of man an essence, or attribute, which, under certain outward conditions, becomes the tyrant of his movements, and renders the disposition to cultivate acquaintance with other vistas a passion too strong to be resisted. Philosophers tell us that "self-preservation is the first law of life," but their efforts to connect this postulate with some rational conclusion deduced from the organism of the animal under discussion, is so egregiously wanting in the elements of a sound syllogism, that we are led to believe that it has no foundation in fact, and that they only meant to say that where the emotion denominated _fear_ assumes the reigns of physical government, an open road and fair play are all that is required to render the proposed achievement a success. It is useless to tell us that men, adopting the improved modes of destroying life which this Christian age has developed, stand up to explode missiles at each other under the persuasion that they are doing something that will tend to preserve life; or, if that were not false doctrine, who that ever attended one of these tournaments of bad shooting is unable to testify to the overpowering conviction that the parties thereto would have enjoyed themselves better in a free exercise of their limbs-- "Over the meadows and far away."