FIGHTING 41 



found the same notion among the frontiersmen of the Far West 

 in later days. It seems likely that there is truth in it ; for such 

 men are in the position of teachers, the handers-on of traditions 

 of life and death, and do not speak as boasters. May it not be 

 that in the white man, as a part of the predominance of his more 

 highly organized nervous system, there is a greater capacity 

 for yielding in a few seconds a larger amount of energy for use 

 in the muscles? It may be that it all depends upon the intensity 

 of the more highly trained will of the white. 



When I was ten years old, and began to be attentive to the 

 deeds and stories of men, there was still the chance to see many 

 who had taken part in the War of 1812-15. It was less remote 

 than the Civil War is from our time. St. Glair's defeat was only 

 a little over half a century in the past, sundry fights with 

 Indians were less remote, and just at hand were the tales from 

 Mexico told by the returning troops, so that I breathed an air 

 of combat, and of it moulded my day-dreams of valor. 



The people with whom I first shaped my notions of life were, 

 by their history, and inevitably, somewhat bloodthirsty. Their 

 ancestors came largely from folk who had fought in England 

 and Scotland, to fight Indians in Virginia and North Carolina, 

 then the British in the Revolution, then more Indians and 

 more British in the Mississippi Valley. As they had never been 

 at peace for a generation, their ideal was naturally the warrior 

 and his battles. This led to the feeling that combat was the 

 fittest occupation of a man. Among the poor whites the fight- 

 ing in that day was commonly without the use of fire-arms and 

 usually of a good-natured brutality. At the county fairs, or the 

 barbecues, a chap with the devil in him would throw up his cap 

 and shout out that he was the best man on the ground. His 

 nearest neighbor would dissent from that proposition; where- 

 upon there would be a rough-and-tumble struggle even more 

 unlimited in its conditions than a dog-fight. Sometimes the 

 kinsmen or clansmen of the combatants would join in, but the 

 ideal was that the two should be left to settle it in a ring of 



