GENERAL BASIL W. DUKE 457

"I had intended to speak to you about it myself," he said, "for our boys ought not to behave that way. It is an offence against good breeding, and they should remember that these men were our comrades, and that we have never received aught but kind treatment from this people. "But," he went on, with an air of ineffable complacency, "there is some slight excuse for it. Our boys feel that we have a higher civilization in Kentucky than obtains in Tennessee."

"For God's sake, Frank," I exclaimed in trembling haste, "don't talk that way. If there be any difference in the respective heights of the two civilizations, no instrument has yet been invented delicate enough to determine it. But don't say that outside of this room, unless you want that blamed guerilla to kill us all."

I am glad to record that matters were happily adjusted without the introduction of any disturbing question of civilization.

I have already spoken of the similitude of parliamentary methods in Kentucky and Tennessee. In this connection I may be permitted to relate two legislative incidents which happened under my own observation, taking care to remark, however, that, while alike, they were unusual. Each, too, happened with immature and inexperienced politicians, in whom the impulse of the individual had not yet been subdued by the self-restraint of the statesman.

I was once a spectator of a legislative session at Nashville, when a vote was being taken on some motion which had aroused a good deal of feeling. The speaker had temporarily quitted his chair for some reason and it was occupied, at the moment of the vote, by a member of the house who was an extreme partisan of the measure under consideration. He was manifestly and grossly unfair in his rulings, and refused a call for the ayes and noes. A storm of protest at once arose and the house was in an uproar. I saw the member from a county on the confines of east Tennessee rush toward the chair, evidently meaning business. He was a gray-eyed, resolute-looking party in appearance, just the sort of gentleman who, in the mountaineer's phrase, "When he sees fitten' to shoot is goin' to shoot." An older and less excited colleague caught hold of him and begged him to do nothing "out of order."   "I'm goin' to do nothing