It struck even a youth like me as being ridiculous for a servile German-Jew pedlar to fancy himself insulted by a casual remark from some mean and ill-bred white, and to feel it necessary to face the tube of a backwoodsman, when he might have ignored him and his rudeness altogether. It was hard to understand why he should resent his honour being doubted, except from a mistaken sense of his importance, for the ill-opinion of the planter community he had trebly earned already, by being a trader, a foreigner, and a Jew; and the small portion of regard he aspired to win by an act of daring bluff was not worth a thought, least of all the peril of his life, or the smart of a wound. With regard to his ‘honour,’ it seemed to bear a different meaning on different banks of a river. On the eastern shore of the Mississippi, it meant probity in business; on the western shore, it signified popular esteem for the punishment of a traducer, and he who was most prompt in killing anyone who made a personal reflection obtained most honour, and therefore every pedlar or clerk in Arkansas hastened to prove his mettle. At South Bend, about nine miles below us, there was a store-keeper who prided himself more upon the ‘honour’ he had won as a duellist than upon commercial integrity. It was the example of his neighbourhood which had fired this abnormal ambition, and, on my arrival at the Arkansas, his clerks had begun to imitate him. The neighbouring merchants, envious of his fame, essayed the perilous venture; and, at last, Mr. Altschul was smitten with the mania. There is no doubt that, had his courage been of a more compact quality, he would have competed with the man of South Bend for ‘honour.’ He selected, however, the choicest of his stock of Smith and Wesson’s vest-pocket revolvers, and was lavishly extravagant with the ammunition. At the outset, he could not resist blinking at the flash of his own pea-shooter, but, by dint of practice, he succeeded in plugging a big tree at twenty paces. Then, in an evil moment, his mounting spirit was inspired to turn his pistolette on a motherly old sow which had strayed among his cabbages, and he mortally wounded her. The owner of the animal was cross old Mr. Hubbard, a small planter, who came on an ambling mule, presently, with a double-barrel shot-gun, charged with an awful number of buck-pellets, to interview Mr. Altschul. When he returned home, I inferred, from Hubbard’s satisfied smile, that the interview had not been unsatisfactory to him. From that moment we noticed that Mr. Altschul abandoned pistol practice--for, naturally, the pistolette was not a fit weapon to cope with a shot-gun. One of my fellow-clerks remarked that it was a pity Mr. Hubbard had no excuse for calling upon the man at South Bend for damages.