My proud fellow-clerks were disposed to think it was the dread of the pistol which made them so guarded in speech and action, but I thought that it was the fear of compromising the personal dignity by a disgraceful squabble with men untaught in the forms of good society. Arkansas is sometimes known as the Bear State, and many of its people at that time were singularly bearish and rude. The self-estimate of such men was sometimes colossal, and their vanities as sensitive as hair-triggers. None of them could boast of the piety of saints, but nearly all had been influenced by the religion of their mothers--just as much as might enable them to be distinguished from barbarians. It is wonderful what trivial causes were sufficient to irritate them. A little preoccupation in one’s own personal affairs, a monosyllabic word, a look of doubt, or a hesitating answer, made them flare up hotly. The true reason for this excessive sensitiveness was that they had lived too much within their own fences, and the taciturnity engendered by exclusiveness had affected their habits. However amiable they might originally have been, their isolation had promoted the growth of egotism and self-importance. This is the essence of ‘Provincialism,’ wherever it is met with, in country or in city life. Few visited our store who did not bear some sign of the pernicious disease, which afflicted old and young in the bottom-lands of the Arkansas. I had not been a week at the store before I was delirious from the fever which accompanies ague, and, for the first time in my life, was dieted on calomel and quinine. The young physician of our neighbourhood, who boarded with Mr. Altschul, communicated to me many particulars regarding the nature of this plague. In the form termed by him ‘congestive chills,’ he had known many cases to terminate fatally within a few hours. Blacks as well as whites were subject to it. Nothing availed to prevent an attack. The most abstemious, temperate, prudent habits no more prevented it than selfish indulgence or intemperance. So, what with isolation on their wide estates, their life amongst obsequious slaves, indigestion, and inflamed livers, their surroundings were not well adapted to make our wealthy customers very amiable or sociable.