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If my memory fail me not, the 10th of June, 1809,
found me at about 11 o'clock in the forenoon, ascending
a long and gentle slope, in what was called “The Dark
Corner” of Lincoln. I believe it took its name from
the moral darkness, which reigned over that portion of
the county, at the time of which I am speaking. If in
this point of view, it was but a shade darker than the
rest of the county, it was inconceivably dark. If any
man can name a trick, or sin, which had not been committed
at the time of which I am speaking, in the very
focus of all the county's illumination, (Lincolnton) he
must himself be the most inventive of the tricky, and the
very Judas of sinners. Since that time, however, (all
humor aside) Lincoln has become a living proof “that
light shineth in darkness.” Could I venture to mingle
the solemn with the ludicrous, even for the purposes of
honorable contrast, I could adduce from this county instances
of the most numerous and wonderful transitions,
from vice and folly, to virtue and holiness, which have
ever perhaps been witnessed since the days of the apostolic
ministry. So much, lest it should be thought by
some, that what I am about to relate, is characteristic of
the county in which it occurred.

Whatever may be said of the moral condition of the
Dark Corner, at the time just mentioned, its natural condition
was any thing but dark. It smiled in all the
charms of spring; and spring borrowed a new charm
from its undulating grounds, its luxuriant woodlands, its

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sportive streams, its vocal birds, and its blushing flowers.

Rapt with the enchantment of the season, and the
scenery around me, I was slowly rising the slope, when
I was startled by loud, profane and boisterous voices,
which seemed to proceed from a thick covert of undergrowth,
about two hundred yards in the advance of me,
and about one hundred to the right of my road.

“You kin, kin you?”

“Yes, I kin, and am able to do it! Boo-oo-oo! Oh,
wake snakes, and walk your chalks! Brimstone and—
fire! Don't hold me, Nick Stoval! The fight 's
made up and let's go at it. — my soul, if I don't
jump down his throat and gallop every chitterling out of
him, before you can say `quit'!”

“Now, Nick, don't hold him! Jist let the wild-cat
come, and I'll tame him. Ned 'll see me a fair fight—
won't you, Ned?”

“Oh, yes; I'll see you a fair fight, blast my old shoes
if I don't.”

“That's sufficient, as Tom Haynes said when he saw
the Elephant. Now let him come.”

Thus they went on, with countless oaths interspersed,
which I dare not even hint at, and with much that I could
not distinctly hear.

In Mercy's name! thought I, what band of ruffians
has selected this holy season, and this heavenly retreat,
for such Pandæmonian riots! I quickened my gait, and
had come nearly opposite to the thick grove whence the
noise proceeded, when my eye caught indistinctly, and
at intervals, through the foliage of the dwarf-oaks and
hickories which intervened, glimpses of a man, or men,
who seemed to be in a violent struggle; and I could
occasionally catch those deep drawn, emphatic oaths,
which men in conflict utter, when they deal blows. I

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dismounted, and hurried to the spot with all speed. I
had overcome about half the space which separated it
from me, when I saw the combatants come to the ground,
and after a short struggle, I saw the uppermost one (for
I could not see the other) make a heavy plunge with
both his thumbs, and at the same instant I heard a cry
in the accent of keenest torture, “Enough!” My
eye's out!”

I was so completely horror-struck, that I stood transfixed
for a moment to the spot where the cry met me.
The accomplices in the hellish deed which had been
perpetrated, had all fled at my approach—at least I
supposed so, for they were not to be seen.

“Now, blast your corn-shucking soul,” said the victor,
(a youth about eighteen years old) as he rose from the
ground, “come cutt'n your shines 'bout me agin, next
time I come to the Court-House, will you! Get your
owl-eye in agin if you can!”

At this moment he saw me for the first time. He
looked excessively embarrassed, and was moving off,
when I called to him, in a tone, emboldened by the
sacredness of my office, and the iniquity of his crime,
“Come back, you brute! and assist me in relieving
your fellow mortal, whom you have ruined forever!”

My rudeness subdued his embarrassment in an instant;
and with a taunting curl of the nose, he replied “you
need n't kick before you're spur'd. There a'nt nobody
there, nor ha'nt been nother. I was jist seein' how I
could 'a' fout.” So saying, he bounded to his plough,
which stood in the corner of the fence about fifty yards
beyond the battle ground.

And would you believe it, gentle reader! his report
was true. All that I had heard and seen, was nothing
more nor less than a Lincoln rehearsal; in which the

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youth who had just left me, had played all the parts, of
all the characters, in a Court-House fight.

I went to the ground from which he had risen; and
there were the prints of his two thumbs, plunged up to
the balls in the mellow earth, about the distance of a
man's eyes apart; and the ground around was broken
up, as if two Stags had been engaged upon it.

HALL.