CHAPTER VI.

EFFECT OF CLIMATE ON TASTES AND APPETITES.

It is worthy of note and may be remarked that one's tastes and appetites undergo great changes in passing from a high northern clime to a southern; so much so that to his own surprise one finds himself literally accomplishing the experience of "loving what he once hated, and hating what he once loved." For example, buttermilk and clabber are delicious to the taste there; but few people ever think of them in the North except in association with food for swine. There, for convenience of using at meals, the milk fresh from the cow is first strained into bowls and tumblers, and then set aside and left stand for the cream to rise, and the hot weather, with or without thunder-storms, to inspissate the milk into clabber. Then it is brought on as the most delicious dish on the table, reserved as dessert for the last round, sprinkled with clean white sugar.

The difference of feeling, taste, appetite and temper we experience in changing climates is exactly measured by the isothermal difference of our latitudes. One may have a sweet platonic temper in the North, but in changing latitude ten or fifteen degrees southward, he will be surprised to find his temper tending to a change of ten or fifteen degrees also. And if he be a Christian he will be tempted at times to think divine grace not sufficient to preserve the peace between conscience and conduct. The reader will please note that we speak in these matters not from observation alone but with the authority of experience also.

We knew a minister of religion there, a recent import from the virtuous and platonic North, who had not been thoroughly mad for twenty years, and who possessed no little degree of self-complacency on the score of an invincible equanimity of temper; and his feeling had the merit of fact; so much so that once on a time, before his migration southward, one of his friends, observing his uniform evenness of temper, even in the midst of great provocation, and becoming irritated at his want of irritation, said to him: "Tell me, Sir, why is it that you don't get mad sometimes; your want of temper seems unmanly, unnatural, and savors of effeminacy, and reminds me to quote Shakespeare on you thus: You can 'smile, and smile, and be a villain still.' Don't refuse to express indignation on just occasion, but blow off the pent-up stuff; a little thunder now and then purifies a sultry atmosphere."

We saw this clerical specimen of "patience on a monument" one day suddenly lose his virtuous temper, and fall into a paroxysm of madness, and on slight provocation, quite fearful to behold, in which he poured out the vials of his wrath upon his friend, to the exhaustion of all decent epithets. Samson was shorn of his strength and left weak like another man, self-mortified beyond measure! Much we searched to know the cause of this sudden transformation, and while we wondered fancy heard a voice whisper, "The climate, the climate."

From this standpoint we commenced a series of observations, and became satisfied the fancied suggestion was correct. We found by pushing inquiry far enough that church members were considered quite excusable in the use of profane language when driving ox or mule teams. The offense was not regarded as deserving severe reprimand or expulsion from the church. A more puritanic style of Christian morals would not allow the excuse to be carried to such a degree of license, for it sternly insists that the Christian should be master, and not subject, at the hour of trial, and will scarcely allow that circumstances may be reckoned in the moral count to palliate offenses.

Doubtless the standard of moral sentiment with the public in gross is lower in Texas than elsewhere in the South, because, forsooth, it is a newer country; and in this respect partakes of the free and easy characteristics common to all new countries in their pioneer life. Besides, it was originally settled by an Anglo-American element, called in the expressive parlance of those days "renegade Americans," from the "States," "refugees from justice" many of them, smart, shrewd and unscrupulous, whose sons are now on the stage of action. This was the element which, during the late war, found an opportunity for the gratification of its native instincts, and dominated everything, and inaugurated and kept alive a perfect reign of terror in the absence of the better class of citizens at the seat of war. Half a dozen of these desperadoes could intimidate and plunder a town without let or hindrance; and if any one objected or offered resistance he was shot down like a dog, and nothing said or done about it. Eight or ten of them entered our store one day, in the summer of 1863, and in our presence helped themselves to suits of clothing, boots and shoes, hats and caps, taking from six to eight hundred dollars' worth, in gold. Some of them duplicated and triplicated the robberies. One of them walked up to us and flourishing a six-shooter across the counter, said: "If you say a word there is what will make daylight shine through your d--d Yankee carcass." The situation was not pleasant at all, but there was no relief. They walked off with their plunder, and we thought as they went, "good riddance to bad rubbish;" but no, this was not the end of the matter, for on the principle that man never forgives whom he has injured, we had to meet a personal challenge to a duel from the leader of the gang, the one who had threatened to make daylight shine in a disagreeable way. The challenge was given because we had said to a lady accomplice of theirs, who was in the store after the robbery, ostensibly to purchase goods, but really to draw us out in some unguarded remark that could be used as an excuse for an attack on us: "That in ordinary times, their conduct would be considered no less a crime than robbery." Our challenger said he was ready to stake his life in vindication of his conduct, and he turned pale and trembled like an aspen leaf. While he was excited we kept cool, and suggested to him that perhaps his information about what had been said was not quite correct, and even if it were, and we should fight over the matter, and one of us should have the satisfaction of carrying the other's blood on his soul to the judgment, we did not see how that would change the character of their original conduct. That if he were reasonable the matter could be adjusted between us peaceably. And on appealing to his better judgment, he conceded we were right, and said in conclusion:

"Mr. North, though you are from our enemies' country I believe you are a gentleman, and hereafter I am your friend."

"Well," said we, "how much better such a termination to a bad matter than to make targets of ourselves in a duel. And now, my good fellow, let by-gones be by-gones, and may we have a better understanding in the future."

"Agreed," he said, and we parted.

We met casually afterward, and he minded the treaty.