"The circumstance to which I allude was something of an affair of honour, as the world blindly calls it, into which I got engaged, and which had so important an influence upon my religious feelings for about two years that I will here particularly relate the circumstances of it. In the last summer vacation, before my going to Cambridge, I attended, with my father, the Northampton races, in our way from the Isle of Wight to visit my brother at his place in Nottinghamshire. I had begun, at that time, to be extremely fond of dancing, as well as cricket, shooting, and the like amusements. At this race ball at Northampton, I enjoyed myself to the full; but, unwittingly, laid the foundation for sorrow on the next day. Fancying myself a sort of leader of the gaiety, in a set which seemed to be the most fashionable and smart of the evening, I must needs be making up parties for select dances; which proceeding was, of course, taken by others as intruding on the liberties of a public entertainment; and it happened that, without knowing it, I barred out from one quadrille which I helped in forming, the sister of a young gentleman of name and fortune in the county. I was in the mean time making up a party for a match at cricket on the racecourse for the next day, and this gentleman was one of my chief helpmates. The next day, while busy in collecting our cricketers to go {25} to the ground, I met him in the street, and he gave me the hard cut. I knew not what it meant, and simply let it pass; but on the morning after, I was surprised at receiving a letter from him to tell me what was my offence: it ended with the words (which are deeply enough impressed on my memory not yet to be forgotten), 'If I did not look upon you as a mere boy, I should call you in a more serious manner to account for your rudeness.' He then told me where he might be found the following day. Without much reflecting on this unpleasant communication, I showed it to my father, who was near me, with several other gentlemen of the county, when I received it. He asked me whether I had meant any rudeness, and when I told him I had not, he bid me write an apology, and particularly charged me not to notice the concluding taunt. He afterwards mentioned it to two others of these gentlemen, who both agreed that I had done right in sending such an answer. But soon after my mind fell into such a torment as I had never yet known. The answer was certainly right according to Christian rules, and I suppose the laws of honour would not have required more; but, at the time, I know not whether it would not be esteemed in his mind and that of the friends whom he might consult, to be too gentle for a man of courage. A most agonizing dilemma I was now in, neither side of which I could endure. On the one hand, I could not bear to look on death, and standing to be shot at was what nothing but a fit of desperation