Our school was called to order at nine o’clock daily. On this morning, teachers and pupils were unfit for lessons. For Mr. Pleasants’ only daughter was one of us, and a general favorite. His niece was likewise a pupil, and the two had the same desk. Their vacant chairs made the tragedy a personal grief to each of us. When Mrs. Nottingham bade us get our Bibles ready for the morning service, not a girl there could read without a break in her trembling voice, and when the dear old lady made tender mention in her prayer of the “sorrowing,” and for “those drawing near unto death,” our sobs drowned the fervent tones. I recall, as one of the minor incidents of the dreadful day, that when I went home in the afternoon, my grandmother insisted I should read the newspaper correspondence aloud to her. She was a captious tyrant at times, and, like many another deaf person, sensitive as to the extent of her infirmity. She “was not so very deaf, except in damp weather, or when she had a cold. If people would only speak distinctly, and not mumble, she would have no trouble in understanding what was said.” In this connection she often made flattering exception of myself as the “one girl she knew who could speak English.” In this capacity she summoned me to her side. She had the week’s papers on her lap. I must pick out the articles “that were responsible for this scandalous affair.” Down I sat, close beside her “good ear,” and read, with precise articulation and right emphasis, the editorials from which I have made excerpts in this chapter. In copying them to-day, the strait-laced New-Englander’s classification of the awful event is in my mind and ear. Every detail of the duel and the cold-blooded preparations therefor—the deadly weapons borne by, and girt about the principals; the sang-froid of seconds and attendant “friends”; the savagery of the combat; the tone of public sentiment that made the foul fight within sight of the steeples of the city practicable, although the leading men of the place were cognizant of each step that led to the scene on the river-bank before sunrise that gray morning—can we, in these later times we are wont to compare regretfully with those, sum up the details and the catastrophe in phrase more fit and true? I resented it hotly, if silently, then. Even my father, who always spoke of duelling as a “remnant of Middle Age barbarism,” shared in the universal grief for his party leader laid low in the prime of his useful manhood, and would suffer no censure of the challenge that had made the fight inevitable. “Pleasants is a brave man, and a proud. He could not endure to sit down quietly under the aspersion of cowardice.” Another terrible day of suspense dragged its slow length along. Hourly bulletins from the chamber where the wounded man was making his last struggle with Fate, alternately cheered and depressed us. He was conscious and cheerful; he had exonerated his opponent from blame in the matter of the duel: