AC dBooks

Yet they were eminently peaceable
people, if let alone. These gentlemen in Atchison had determined to
disarm the Free State people living in the country; and Mr. Speck,
being a Free State man, open and avowed, they called on him, but he
was not at home. They therefore asked his wife: "Has your husband a
rifle, musket, or fire-arms of any kind?" She brought out an old Queen
Anne's musket, as rusty and worn as if it had been in service ever
since the Revolutionary war. But while they were inspecting the rusty
old thing, whether it was worth carrying away, she took from a closet
a bran span new double-barrel fowling-piece, and, putting her finger
on the trigger, she said, "Now, sir, if you do not lay down that
musket and leave the house, I will shoot you." If this gentleman had
suddenly roused up a female tiger, he would not have been more
terror-stricken than when he found himself facing this woman, blazing
with scorn and irrepressible resentment, and he concluded he did not
want the rusty old musket, _and did not ask to examine the other one.


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