Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty's household troops. My guardian had a special veneration for England in general and for Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to Yale with the full understanding that St. Bridget's, Oxon., was the place where I was to be "finished." I left Yale at the end of Junior year and crossed the ocean in the crack steamer of the then famous Collins line. I do not believe any young American ever had a more favorable introduction to England than I had, and the wonder is that, considering the philo-Anglican atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a thorough-paced renegade. I was, however, blessed with a tolerably independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact throughout my university course. Like Tom Brown, I felt myself drawn to the sporting set, and, as I was always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as an oarsman, and was well satisfied to be looked upon as the Yankee champion sundry amateur rowing-and boxing-matches, as well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I was the mark for no end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but was nearly always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American name, and so at length graduated in the "firsts" as to scholarship, and enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling number four in the "'Varsity eight" in our annual match with Cambridge on the Thames. Moreover, I stood six feet in my stockings, had the muscle of a gladiator, and was physically the equal of any man at Oxford. After the race was over my special cronies hung about London for a few days, usually making that classical "cave" of Evans's a rendezvous in the evening. Two or three young officers of the Guards were often with us, and one night, when the talk had turned, as it often did, on personal prowess, the superb average physique of their regiment was duly lauded by our soldier companions. At length one of them remarked, in that aggravatingly superior tone which some Englishmen assume, that any man in his troop could handle any two of the then present company. This provoked a general laugh of incredulity, and two or three of our college set turned to me with--"What do you say to that, Jonathan?" "Nonsense!" said I. "I'll put on the gloves with the biggest fellow among them, any day."