d risen to a level it was pointing at
Steve's breast, but the Major said "No, that is not wise. Take all the
risks of getting murdered yourself, but don't run any risk of murdering
the other man. If you survive a duel you want to survive it in such a
way that the memory of it will not linger along with you through the
rest of your life and interfere with your sleep. Aim at your man's leg;
not at the knee, not above the knee; for those are dangerous spots. Aim
below the knee; cripple him, but leave the rest of him to his mother."

By grace of these truly wise and excellent instructions, Joe tumbled
Fitch down next morning with a bullet through his lower leg, which
furnished him a permanent limp. And Joe lost nothing but a lock of hair,
which he could spare better then than he could now. For when I saw him
here in New York a year ago, his crop was gone: he had nothing much left
but a fringe, with a dome rising above.

[Sidenote: (1864.)]

About a year later I got _my_ chance. But I was not hunting for it.
Goodman went off to San Francisco for a week's holiday, and left me to
be chief editor. I had supposed that that was an easy berth, there being
nothing to do but write one editorial per day; but I was disappointed in
that superstition. I couldn't find anything to write an article about,
the first day. Then it occurred to me that inasmuch as it was the 22nd
of April, 1864, the next morning would be the three-hundredth
anniversary of Shakespeare's birthday--and what better theme could I
want than that? I got the Cyclopaedia and examined it, and found out who
Shakespeare was and what he had done, and I borrowed all that and laid
it before a community that couldn't have been better prepared for
instruction about Shakespeare than if they had been prepared by art.
There wasn't enough of what Shakespeare had done to make an editorial of
the necessary length, but I filled it out with what he hadn't
done--which in many respects was more important and striking and
readable than the handsomest things he had really accomplished. But next
day I was in trouble again. There were no more Shakespeares to work up.
There was nothing in past history, or in the world's future
possibilities, to make an editorial out of, suitable to that community;
so there was but one theme left. That theme was Mr. Laird, proprietor of
the Virginia "Union." _His_ editor had gone off to San Francisco too,
and Laird was trying his hand at editing. I woke up M