The Kentuckian nowadays does not come to county court to pick a quarrel or to settle one. He _has_ no quarrel. His fist has reverted to its natural use and become a hand. Nor does he go armed. Positively it is true that gentlemen in this State do not now get satisfaction out of each other in the market-place, and that on a modern county court day a three-cornered hat is hardly to be seen. And yet you will go on defining a Kentuckian in terms of his grandfather, unaware that he has changed faster than the family reputation. The fighting habit and the shooting habit were both more than satisfied during the Civil War. Another old-time feature of the day has disappeared--the open use of the pioneer beverage. Merchants do not now set it out for their customers; in the country no longer is it the law of hospitality to offer it to a guest. To do so would commonly be regarded in the light of as great a liberty as to have omitted it once would have been considered an offence. The decanter is no longer found on the sideboard in the home; the barrel is not stored in the cellar. Some features of the old Kentucky market-place have disappeared. The war and the prostration of the South destroyed that as a market for certain kinds of stock, the raising and sales of which have in consequence declined. Railways have touched the eastern parts of the State, and broken up the distant toilsome traffic with the steamboat wagons of the mountaineers. No longer is the day the general buying day for the circumjacent country as formerly, when the farmers, having great households of slaves, sent in their wagons and bought on twelve months' credit, knowing it would be twenty-four months' if they desired. The doctors, too, have nearly vanished from the street corners, though on the highway one may still happen upon the peddler with his pack, and in the midst of an eager throng still may meet the swaying, sightless old fiddler, singing to ears that never tire gay ditties in a cracked and melancholy tone. [Illustration: LORDS OF THE SOIL.]