And who were these ruffians?
Were they uneducated villains, whom poverty and distress had hardened into crime?
Far from it.

Mr.
Baker was the owner of a grocery store; of the others, one was the proprietor of the St.Charles hotel, New Bremen; the second was a young lawyer, the third was a clerk in the "Planter's House." Can the sinks of ignorance and vice in any community present a more bloody scene of brutality than was here deliberately enacted, by educated people in respectable positions, in the middle of the day?
What can be thought of the value of human life, when I add that all these miscreants were bailed?
These are merely the accounts which have met my eye in the natural course of reading the newspaper, for I can most truthfully declare I have not taken the slightest trouble to hunt them up.

The following, which bears upon the same point, was related to me in the course of conversation at dinner, and it occurred in New Orleans.

Mr.A.treads on Mr.B.'s too several times; Mr.B.kicks Mr.A.down stairs, and this at a respectable evening party.

Now what does Mr.A.do?
He goes outside and borrows a bowie-knife from a hack-cabman, then returns to the party, watches and follows Mr.B.to the room where the hats and cloaks were placed, seizes a favourable moment, and rips Mr.B.'s bowels open.