The laugh again subsiding, he continued: “You see I have a patient I am watching over there; and being in the neighborhood, was called in to see two or three of the better class of colored people. I’m afraid you’ll have trouble, there, at that suit. The niggers are saucy, and very angry about that collision between the Bakers and the militia.” “Well, Doctor, the colored people in South Carolina have become so insolent and insurrectionary, and intractable, and have taken on so many intolerable airs, that they must be made to know their places. You will see their wenches on the streets of Augusta and Charleston, and all our cities, with their “pin-backs” and “button shoes,” and “bustles,” and indeed imitating our ladies in everything; and they even act as though they expected a white man to step aside and let them pass, as if they were the ladies themselves. I saw an affair in Charleston the other day that _made my blood boil_, and I involuntarily laid my hand upon my pistol, but fortunately I was preserved from using it. “Three great black—_creatures_, I suppose I must call them _men_—were walking up the street, and met three young ladies whom I know to be members of one of our best families. What do you think but that these impudent brutes actually crowded our ladies into the gutter—made them actually step off the pavement for want of room to pass! Quite fortunately the ditch was dry, and not deep—four or five inches, at most. But such indignities are too great a tax on the forbearance of a gentleman of gallantry! Only one of the ladies actually stepped off, but then, time was when I could have blown out the brains of all three of the rascals, and the community and the State would have sustained me. But those were days of “home rule.” Alas! when shall we ever see them again! “I do not know what they are meditating at Baconsville, but I hear they have been performing military evolutions, with arms in their hands, two or three times a week, recently, and at night too; and I am called over to put a stop to it. Why, we are not safe in our beds! It is one of the atrocities of our carpet-bag government that they are allowed arms _at all_, and now they have attacked our people.” “Now, you don’t say so, General!” exclaimed the Doctor. “To be sure! This case of mine would bear that construction; though Mr. Robert Baker has, in the absence of counsel, very mildly, and I fear unwisely, put it on the ground of ‘obstructing the highway.’ He might have made a case much stronger, for they obstructed the way with their guns and bayonets, and Gaston says some of them, at least, were seen to load their guns on the spot.” “It is a case of positive violence, then, and insurrection?” “Oh, positive insubordination,” said the General, with great emphasis and indignation. “And they have been making such threats that I’m called over to see if there is any redress possible—any law or means by which they can be restrained.”