CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. — VIII.

      Table of Contents.

      (1864.)

      [Dictated in 1906.] In those early days duelling suddenly became a fashion in the new Territory of Nevada, and by 1864 everybody was anxious to have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he was not able to thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one himself.

      At that time I had been serving as city editor on Mr. Goodman’s Virginia City “Enterprise” for a matter of two years. I was twenty-nine years old. I was ambitious in several ways, but I had entirely escaped the seductions of that particular craze. I had had no desire to fight a duel; I had no intention of provoking one. I did not feel respectable, but I got a certain amount of satisfaction out of feeling safe. I was ashamed of myself; the rest of the staff were ashamed of me — but I got along well enough. I had always been accustomed to feeling ashamed of myself, for one thing or another, so there was no novelty for me in the situation. I bore it very well. Plunkett was on the staff; R. M. Daggett was on the staff. These had tried to get into duels, but for the present had failed, and were waiting. Goodman was the only one of us who had done anything to shed credit upon the paper. The rival paper was the Virginia “Union.” Its editor for a little while was Tom Fitch, called the “silver-tongued orator of Wisconsin” — that was where he came from. He tuned up his oratory in the editorial columns of the “Union,” and Mr. Goodman invited him out and modified him with a bullet. I remember the joy of the staff when Goodman’s challenge was accepted by Fitch. We ran late that night, and made much of Joe Goodman. He was only twenty-four years old; he lacked the wisdom which a person has at twenty-nine, and he was as glad of being it as I was that I wasn’t. He chose Major Graves for his second (that name is not right, but it’s close enough; I don’t remember the Major’s name). Graves came over to instruct Joe in the duelling art. He had been a Major under Walker, the “gray-eyed man of destiny,” and had fought all through that remarkable man’s filibustering campaign in Central America. That fact gauges the Major. To say that a man was a Major under Walker, and came out of that struggle ennobled by Walker’s praise, is to say that the Major was not merely a brave man but that he was brave to the very utmost limit of that word. All of Walker’s men were like that. I knew the Gillis family intimately. The father made the campaign under Walker, and with him one son. They were in the memorable Plaza fight, and stood it out to the last against overwhelming odds, as did also all of the Walker men. The son was killed at the father’s side. The father received a bullet through the eye. The old man — for he was an old man at the time — wore spectacles, and the bullet and one of the glasses went into his skull and remained there. There were some other sons: Steve, George, and Jim, very young chaps — the merest lads — who wanted to be in the Walker expedition, for they had their father’s dauntless spirit. But Walker wouldn’t have them; he said it was a serious expedition, and no place for children.

      The Major was a majestic creature, with a most stately and dignified and impressive military bearing, and he was by nature and training courteous, polite, graceful, winning; and he had that quality which I think I have encountered in only one other man — Bob Howland — a mysterious quality which resides in the eye; and when that eye is turned upon an individual or a squad, in warning, that is enough. The man that has that eye doesn’t need to go armed; he can move upon an armed desperado and quell him and take him prisoner without saying a single word. I saw Bob Howland do that, once — a slender, good-natured, amiable, gentle, kindly little skeleton of a man, with a sweet blue eye that would win your heart when it smiled upon you, or turn cold and freeze it, according to the nature of the occasion.

      The Major stood Joe up straight; stood Steve Gillis up fifteen paces away; made Joe turn right side towards Steve, cock his navy six-shooter — that prodigious weapon — and hold it straight down against his leg; told him that that was the correct position for the gun — that the position ordinarily in use at Virginia City (that is to say, the gun straight up in the air, then brought slowly down to your man) was all wrong. At the word “One,” you must raise the gun slowly and steadily to the place on the other man’s body that you desire to convince. Then, after a pause, “two, three — fire — Stop!” At the word “stop,” you may fire — but not earlier. You may give yourself as much time as you please after that word. Then, when you fire, you may advance and go on firing at your leisure and pleasure, if you can get any pleasure out of it. And, in the meantime, the other man, if he has been properly instructed and is alive to his privileges, is advancing on you, and firing — and it is always likely that more or less trouble will result.

      Naturally, when Joe’s revolver had 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.

      (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 Cyclopædia 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