Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

DUELING
ently. The weapons were pistols. The dueling terms
were somewhat beyond custom in the matter of
severity, if I may gather that from the statement
that the combat was fought "unter sehr schweren
Bedingungen "-to wit, "distance, 15 steps-with 3
steps advance." There was but one exchange of
shots. The student was hit. "He put his hand on
his breast, his body began to bend slowly forward,
then collapsed in death and sank to the ground."
It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list,
but I find in each and all of them one and the same
ever-recurring defect-the principals are never present, but only by their sham representatives. The
real principals in any duel are not the duelists themselves, but their families. They do the mourning,
the suffering; theirs is the loss and theirs the misery.
They stake all that, the duelist stakes nothing but
his life, and that is a trivial thing compared with
what his death must cost those whom he leaves
behind him. Challenges should not mention the
duelist; he has nothing much at stake, and the real
vengeance cannot reach him. The challenge should
summon the offender's old gray mother and his
young wife and his little children-these, or any of
whom he is a dear and worshiped possession-and
should say, "You have done me no harm, but I am
the meek slave of a custom which requires me to
crush the happiness out of your hearts and condemn
you to years of pain and grief, in order that I may
wash clean with your tears a stain which has been
put upon me by another person."
The logic of it is admirable; a person has robbed
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