and as he swum along down stream, they followed along the bank
and kept on shooting at him; and when he struck shore he was dead.
Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was captain
of the boat.
‘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.
No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has
ever written it–NO one, either in the world or out of it
(taking the Scriptures for evidence on the latter point);
therefore it would not be fair to exact grammatical perfection
from the peoples of the Valley; but they and all other peoples
may justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and PURPOSELY
debauching their grammar.
I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10.
The island which I remembered was some three miles long
and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily timbered, and lay
near the Kentucky shore–within two hundred yards of it,
I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with
a spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant
little tuft, and this was no longer near the Kentucky shore;
it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away.
In war times the island had been an important place,
for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily fortified,
there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and lower
divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate, until a
junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land;
but the island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river
is without obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee,
back into Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again.
So a mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell;
but otherwise unchanged from its former condition and aspect.
Its blocks of frame-houses were still grouped in the same
old flat plain, and environed by the same old forests.
It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither grown
nor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high water
had invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news;
for in low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and
in my day an overflow had always been considered an impossibility.
This present flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated
in the river’s history for several generations before a deluge