ng 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 to whom he is a
dear and worshipped 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 me of a penny; I
must beggar ten innocent persons to make good my loss. Surely
nobody's "honor" is worth all that.

Since the duellist's family are the real principals in a duel, the
State ought to compel them to be present at it. Custom, also, ought
to be so amended as to require it; and without it no duel ought to
be allowed to go on. If that student's unoffending mother had been
present and watching the officer through her tears as he raised his
pistol, he--why, he would have fired in the air. We know that. For
we know how we are all made. Laws ought to be based upon the
ascertained facts of our nature. It would be a simple thing to make
a duelling law which would stop duelling.

As things are now, the mother is never invited. She submits to
this; and without outward complaint, for she, too, is the vassal of
custom, and custom requires her to conceal her pain when she learns
the disastrous news that her son must go to the duelling-field, and
by the powerful force that is lodged in habit and custom she is
enabled to obey this trying requirement--a requirement which exacts
a miracle of her, and gets it. Last January a neighbor of ours who
has a young son in the army was wakened by this youth at three
o'clock one morning, and she sat up in bed and listened to his
message:

"I have come to tell you something, mother, which will distress
you, but you must be good and brave, and bear it. I have been
affronted by a fellow officer, and we fight at three this
afternoon. Lie down and sleep, now, and think no more about it."

She kissed him good night and lay down paralyzed with grief and
fear, but said nothing. But she did not sleep; she prayed and
mourned till the first streak of dawn, then fle