'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man and his two
sons concluded they'd leave the country. They started to take steamboat
just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they arrived just
as the two young Darnells was walking up the companion-way with their
wives on their arms. The fight begun then, and they never got no
further - both of them killed. After that, old Darnell got into trouble
with the man that run the ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it -
and died. But his friends shot old Darnell through and through - filled
him full of bullets, and ended him.'
The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared in ease
and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred. His loose
grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. This habit among
educated men in the West is not universal, but it is prevalent -
prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities; and to a degree
which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a Westerner
who would be accounted a highly educated man in any country, say 'never
mind, it DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERENCE, anyway.' A life-long resident who was
present heard it, but it made no impression upon her. She was able to
recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but she confessed that
the words had not grated upon her ear at the time - a confession which
suggests that if educated people can hear such blasphemous grammar, from
such a source, and be unconscious of the deed, the crime must be
tolerably common - so common that the general ear has become dulled by
familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to such
affronts.
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