Human fiends

Chavez marker via Coronado Quivira Museum

Southern Literary Messenger - September 1851

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER

... 'Twas here that a cry to God, wrested by human fiends from a brother man, fell unanswered,—echoless on the desert air.  --September 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

BENITO CERENO

On heart-broken pretense of entreating a cup of cold water, fiends in human form had got into lonely dwellings, nor retired until a dark deed had been done. --Putnam's Monthly (October 1855); and The Piazza Tales (1856).

The passage quoted above from "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" alludes to the 1843 murder of Don Antonio José Chávez, spelled "Charvis" in both the magazine and book versions.

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER

Oh! how much better to die thus, than that there should enter into the soul, the hell which must accompany the conception of such a deed! --September 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

PIERRE

Ah! Easy for man to think like a hero; but hard for man to act like one. All imaginable audacities readily enter into the soul; few come boldly forth from it. --Herman Melville, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities (1852)