lie; whereupon the latter drew a bowie-knife, and
completely severed, at one blow, Levi's head from his body."

In a St. Louis paper, I read of a German, Hoffman by name, who was
supposed by Baker to be too intimate with his wife, and who was
consequently desired to discontinue his visits. Hoffman remonstrated in
his reply, assuring the husband that his suspicions were groundless. A
short time after he received a letter from Mrs. Baker, requesting him to
call upon her: he obeyed the summons, and was shown into her bedroom at
the hotel. The moment he got there, Mrs. Baker pulled two pistols from
under the pillow, and discharged both at his head. Hoffman rushed out of
the house; scarce was he in the street, when Mr. Baker and three other
ruffians pounced upon him, dragged him back to the hotel, and placed
guards at the door to prevent any further ingress from the street. They
then stripped him perfectly naked, lashed him with cow-hides till there
was scarce a sound piece of flesh in his body, dashing cold water over
him at intervals, and then recommencing their barbarities. When tired of
this brutality, they emasculated their wretched victim with a common
table-knife. 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 favou