With the lighting of the pipes one evening, the conversation of the Club turned upon what constituted courage and a high sense of honor; whether they were native or acquired gifts. A good deal of talk ensued, until at last Wright's opinion was asked: "You are all right," said he, "and all wrong. Some men are born insensible to fear, and some have a high sense of honor through instinct. But this, I take it, is not the rule and comes, I think, mostly as an hereditary gift, through long generations of proud ancestors. In my judgment, no gift to mortals is as noble as a lofty, honest pride. I do not mean that spurious article which we see so much of, but the pride which will not permit a man or woman to have an unworthy thought, because of the sense of degradation which it brings to the breast that entertains it. This, I believe, is more common in women than in men, and I suppose that it was this divine trait, manifesting itself in a brutal age, which gave birth to the chivalry of the Middle Ages. "I have known a few men who, I believe, were born without the instinct of fear. Charley Fairfax was one of these. He was a dead shot with a pistol. He had some words with a man one day on the street in Sacramento, and the man being very threatening, Fairfax drew and cocked his Derringer. At the same moment the man drove the blade of a sword cane through one of the lungs of Fairfax, making a wound which eventually proved fatal. Fairfax raised his Derringer and took a quick aim at the heart of the murderer, but suddenly dropped the weapon and said: 'You have killed me, but you have a wife and children; for their sakes I give you your life,' and sank fainting and, as he thought, dying, into the arms of a friend who caught him as he was falling. "There are other men as generous as Fairfax was, but to do what he did, when smarting under a fatal wound, requires the coolness and the nerve of absolute self-possession. "Not one man in a million under such circumstances could command himself enough to think to be generous. Many a man has, for his courage, had a statue raised to his memory who never did and never could have given any such proof of a manhood absolutely self-contained as did Fairfax on that occasion. "But, as a rule, we are all mere creatures of education. A friend of mine came 'round the Horn in a clipper ship. He told me that when off the cape they encountered a gale which drove the ship far to the southward; that the weather was so dreadfully cold that the ship's rigging was sheeted with ice from sleet and frozen spray.