We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then _his_ dishonor is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids him to seek the only reparation.