The Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain (best beach reads .TXT) 📖

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 Rowland⁠—that 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 his right side toward 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, bring it 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. “One, 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 his man down 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 a year ago his crop was gone; he had nothing much left but a fringe, with a dome rising above.

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 Cyclopedia 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 Mr. Laird with some courtesies of the kind that were fashionable among newspaper editors in that region, and he came back at me the next day in a most vitriolic way. So we expected a challenge from Mr. Laird, because according to the rules⁠—according to the etiquette of dueling as reconstructed and reorganized and improved by the duelists of that region⁠—whenever you said a thing about another person that he didn’t like, it wasn’t sufficient for him to talk back in the same, or a more offensive spirit; etiquette required him to send a challenge. So we waited for a challenge⁠—waited all day. It didn’t come. And as the day wore along, hour after hour, and no challenge came, the boys grew depressed. They lost heart. But I was cheerful; I felt better and better all the time. They couldn’t understand it, but I could understand it. It was my make that enabled me to be cheerful when other people were despondent. So then it became necessary for us to waive etiquette and challenge Mr. Laird. When we reached that decision, they began to cheer up, but I began to lose some of my animation. However, in