44 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



beautiful animal quality. All his talk was of fighting. His only 

 treasures were half a dozen duelling-swords with blood-stains 

 on them, and of each he had the most precise traditions as to 

 the place of entry, the nature of the stroke, and the result. 

 These he showed to those only whom he esteemed as successful 

 pupils; they were to him sacred relics not to be looked at by 

 unworshipful eyes. He was, indeed, the most perfect man of a 

 trade I have ever known, in that he was absolutely nothing else. 



To Scherer's salle d'armes came a good many well-bred lovers 

 of fencing, among them Milton Sayles, afterwards known as a 

 politician and jurist, a young man of much quality and of a 

 large nature. Among them there were some reprobates, includ- 

 ing a dissolute Britisher with the preposterous appellation of 

 Captain Mars, who was a good hand with the broad-sword. It 

 was the custom of the well-trained habitues of the place some- 

 times to fence with naked broad-swords, marking the strokes, as 

 the phrase is, not sending them home. One day while I thus 

 engaged with that son of Mars, he was attacked with a sudden 

 visitation of mania and began a real assault on me. One of his 

 strokes was effective enough to sting me so that it became a 

 real duel, though my purpose was limited to disabling his 

 sword-arm which was not easy, because his madness made 

 him insensible to the nips he received. Scherer, at the time in 

 another room, detected by the sound of the steel that there was 

 business needing his attention, looked in quickly, grasped the 

 situation, and with a leap pinioned the wight and flung him on 

 the floor. As a bit of stout daring of a little man dealing with 

 one twice his size, I have never seen the like. 



While I was in Cambridge, I saw Scherer only from time to 

 time. When I returned home in vacation in the winter of 1860- 

 61, 1 found him awaiting me with trouble upon him. It seemed 

 that a rival had set up a competing school of fencing and had 

 challenged him to a trial, which should include a contest between 

 a selected pupil trained by each teacher. The contest was to 

 take place in a hall or theatre in the part of Cincinnati known 



