"Yes, to a bargee, Walter. The world might have called him mean or cowardly for such a confession, but he would have shown true moral courage and nobility for all that. To do what will give pain to others rather than incur the reproach of cowardice is really acting under the tyranny of a mean and slavish fear of man, though it may be a plucky thing in the eyes of the World." "Ah, well, auntie, that is certainly a new view of things to me; and I suppose, then, you would apply the same test to duelling,--affairs of honour, as they used to be called?" "Most certainly so, Walter. The duellist is one of the worst of moral cowards." "Ah! but," cried the other, "to fight a duel used to be considered a very plucky thing, and it really was so, auntie." "I don't doubt it, Walter; but it was a very immoral thing also. Happily, public opinion has quite changed on the subject of duelling in our own country, and no doubt this has been owing indirectly to the spread of a truer religious tone amongst us. But what could be more monstrous than the prevailing feeling about duelling a few years ago, as I can well remember it in my young days. Why, duelling was at that time the highroad to a reputation for courage, and the man who refused to fight was frowned upon in good society, and in some places scouted from it. And--I say it with the deepest shame--my own sex greatly helped to keep up this feeling; for the man who had fought the most duels was, with the ladies of his own neighbourhood, for the most part, an object of special admiration and favour. "And yet, what nobility or moral courage was there in the man who gave or accepted the challenge? Just think of what the consequences might be, and what the ground of the quarrel often was. A hasty word, or even a mere thoughtless breach of etiquette, would bring a challenge; and the person called out must not decline to meet his challenger, and give him `satisfaction,' as it was called, in the shape of a pistol bullet, under pain of being cut by all his friends and acquaintances as a coward. So a man who was a husband and father would steal away from his home early in the morning, and go out to some lonely spot and meet the man whom he had offended, and be murdered in cold blood, and carried back a bleeding corpse to his miserable widow and fatherless children, just because he could not bear to be called a coward by the world. And to call this `satisfaction!' The devil never palmed upon his poor deluded slaves a more transparent lie.