-man,
who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without
needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an
upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in the
science of worldly address, cannot always evade without some loss of
self-respect. Suavity in this manner may, it is true, be reconciled with
firmness in the matter; but not easily by a young person who wants all
the appropriate resources of knowledge, of adroit and guarded language,
for making his good temper available. Men are protected from insult and
wrong, not merely by their own skill, but also in the absence of any
skill at all, by the general spirit of forbearance to which society has
trained all those whom they are likely to meet. But boys meeting with no
such forbearance or training in other boys, must sometimes be thrown
upon feuds in the ratio of their own firmness, much more than in the
ratio of any natural proneness to quarrel. Such a subject, however, will
be best illustrated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds.

The first, but merely transient and playful, nor worth noticing at all,
but for its subsequent resurrection under other and awful colouring in
my dreams, grew out of an imaginary slight, as I viewed it, put upon me
by one of my guardians. I had four guardians: and the one of these who
had the most knowledge and talent of the whole, a banker, living about a
hundred miles from my home, had invited me when eleven years old to his
house. His eldest daughter, perhaps a year younger than myself, wore at
that time upon her very lovely face the most angelic expression of
character and temper that I have almost ever seen. Naturally, I fell in
love with her. It seems absurd to say so; and the more so, because two
children more absolutely innocent than we were cannot be imagined,
neither of us having ever been at any school;--but the simple truth is,
that in the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And the proof
that I was so showed itself in three separate modes: I kissed her glove
on any rare occasion when I found it lying on a table; secondly, I
looked out for some excuse to be jealous of her; and, thirdly, I did my
very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the quarrel for was the
luxury of a reconciliation; a hill cannot be had, you know, without
going to the expense of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of
a moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet h