Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1884 — HUMORS OF DUELING. [ARTICLE]

HUMORS OF DUELING.

Some Amtuing Episodes on the Field of Honor. A certain mathematical tutor at Cambridge, who . had been confidentially made the recipient of information to the effect that a graduate and a pupil had about completed preparations for a hostile meeting, sought out the latter and inquired: “What is this all about —why do you fight ?” “Because he gave me the lie, ” frankly and promptly replied the young man. “He said you lied, eh?—well, let him prove it; if he proves it, then you did lie, of coarse; but if he does not prove it, why then, it is he who has lied. Why should you shoot one another?” In the gallery of Dnsenne, one time, a crack shot was affording a good deal of entertainment to himself and others by shattering one after another the puppets set up to be fired at. There was one man present, however, who could not laugh. That man was the proprietor of the puppets. At last they were all down but one—that was Napoleon. The marksman took quick aim, and down went the first consul. The proprietor gave a wild scream, and exclaimed: “You cannot fire as well upon the ground!” “Come out and see!” “Bang!” and down fell the proprietor. “He could fire as well,” groaned the prostrate one. Croquard was not unlike St. Feix, in many respects, although not so gallant and proficient in the use of the sword, and was always without a sous. One day, at the instance of the Count de Chambord, he called upon a contractor and challenged him, at which the latter picked Croquard up and held him under a pump and pumped water on him until he was completely drenched. He fence challenged a linen draper, whose wife informed Croquard that her husband was ill and would not recover before six months. In precisely six months from the day of his first Croquard again called, and was again met at the door by the wife of the linen draper, who invited the nomadic duelist to breakfast. He declined, although hungry, saying that he wanted to fight more than he wanted to eat. “Won’t monsieur try a glass of Madeira?” inquired the diplomatic woman, with well-affected affability. “ifraderia!” ejeculated Croquard, with a smack of his lips like the crack of a whip. “Oui, oui, my dear madame; and your good husband shall remain ill for another six months. ” Croquard once got enraged with an actor named Mouton, and was about to challenge the Thespian, when he remembered that he owed him five francs. “How unlucky, mon Dieu!” he cried, after having unsuccessfully attempted to borrow that amount from others present, “that I should owe a man money whom I want to fight. ”

Saint Beuve once fought a duel holding an umbrella —during the preliminaries of which he said that he had no objection to being killed, but that he was determined not to get wet. When the Duke of Wellington wanted the Tenth Regiment kept at Dublin, he admitted that lots of duels would grow out of such action, “but that’s of no consequence,” he added. Some years ago two inexperienced shooters met in the woods near Paris, and at the first discharge of their pistols a cry went up at a point only a few yards away, and it was quickly discovered that a wellknown attorney had been hit. “If it is only a lawyer,” cried xAe of the combatants, “let us fire again.” During the progress of a duel between Senator William M. Gwin and Representative J. W. McCorkle, in 1853, a poor donkey nearly half a mile away was shot dead —and the donkey was not even a spectate*; Sterne once fought a duel about a goose, and Raleigh one concerning a tavern bill. An Irishman once challenged an Englishman because the latler declared that: anchovies did not grow on trees. A member of Louis the Eighteenth’s bodyguard challenged three men in one day —one because he had stared; at him, another because he had looked at him askew, and the third' on account of his passing by without looking at him at all. A Liverpool sea captain was once challenged, and named harpoons as. weapons. A Frenchman who had been called out named twenty-four loaves of “seige bread”—“we shdll eat against each other,” he said!, “until one of usshall diey for one of us is sure to die.*’ Many who have reeeived challenges have accepted and named horsewhips or cowhides. Two Tennessee editors, who had long quarreled, repaired to the field to fight, but settled their difficulty after firing one shot by agreeing to merge their papers- into one concern and enter into partnership with each other, which they carried, into effect after their return. In 1858 M. de Pene, suParsian journalist, was challenged by a whole regiment. Dumas fought with Gaillardet, near Paris, over a controversy concerning the authorship of “Lai Tour de Neale.” Marshal Ney once challenged every man in a theater. In his fatal duel with Lieut. Cecil, Staokpole, after firing, said, shaking has head and smiling : “By George! I have missed him. ” — B. C. ‘Truman, vm Alta California.