"Justice does not demand that a man wait until he has been bored through with a pistol ball before he lifts his arm in self defense."

Nature's First Law.

   To kill a human being is a terrible thing. Self-preservation may require it, demand it, but it is a duty from which few men will not shrink. The knowledge, though it dwells in the secrecy of one's own bosom, that by his hand a fellow-being has been hurled into eternity, is the awful reward of an act of duty. "Self-preservation is the first law of nature," is a trite saying, but it is no less a true one. When a man threatens, provides himself with arms and dogs the footsteps of another with the avowed purpose of taking his life, the one who is threatened has a right to take whatever methods he may deem proper to protect himself, though it be the worst. Justice does not demand that a man wait until he has been bored through with a pistol ball before he lifts his arm in self defense; it does not even demand that he retreat from his assailant beyond his own desire. Nature has given him the right of personal liberty, the power of locomotion without unlawful restraint. No man has a right to deprive him of this.

[The Holt County Sentinel, Oregon, Missouri, Friday, October 4, 1907. 43rd Year, Number 21 Pg. 1]