_Tommy._--But then I suppose they fight; and that is being as passionate as I was. _Mr Barlow._--I am sorry that you, who pretend to have been so well brought up, should have recourse to the example of the Greenlanders, in order to justify your own conduct; but in this case you are mistaken, for the barbarians are a great deal wiser than young gentlemen. The person who thinks himself injured does indeed challenge his antagonist, but it is to a very different sort of combat from what you imagine. Both parties appear at the appointed time, and each surrounded with a company of his particular friends. The place where they assemble is generally the middle of one of their large huts, that all the persons of their society may be impartial spectators of their contest. When they are thus convened, the champion, who by agreement is to begin, steps forward into the middle of the circle, and entertains them with a song or speech, which he has before meditated. In this performance he generally contrives to throw all the ridicule he is able upon his antagonist, and his satire is applauded by his own party, and excites universal merriment among the audience. When he has sung or declaimed himself out of breath, it is the turn of his rival to begin, who goes on in the same manner, answering all the satire that has been thrown upon him, and endeavouring to win the laughter over to his own side. In this manner do the combatants go on, alternately reciting their compositions against each other, till the memory or invention of one of them fails, and he is obliged to yield the victory to his rival. After this public spectacle of their ingenuity, the two champions generally forget all their animosities, and are cordially reconciled. "This," added Mr Barlow, "appears to me to be a much better method of answering ridicule, than by giving way to passion and resentment, and beating those that displease us; and one of these honest Greenlanders would be as much ashamed of such a sudden transport of anger as a Kamtschatkan traveller would be of managing his dogs as ill as you did yesterday." CHAPTER VII. Tommy and Harry visit Home--The Fashionable Guests--Miss Simmons takes notice of Harry--Harry's Troubles--Master Compton and Mash--Estrangement of Tommy--Visit to the Theatre--Misbehaviour there--Card Playing--The Ball--Harry Dancing a Minuet--Story of Sir Philip Sidney--Master Mash insults Harry--The Fight in the Drawing-room--The Bull-baiting--Tommy strikes Harry--Master Mash's Combat with Harry--Tommy's Narrow Escape from the Bull--The Grateful Black.