46 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



as the wight went down. It had in it a bit of hell. I managed 

 to get away without a word with him. From that day I have 

 never held a foil or seen a fencing bout, except some of the pre- 

 posterous things on the stage. 



In 1865, after the Civil War was over, I met Scherer on the 

 street. He had been an officer in a cavalry regiment, and the 

 trials of service had brought him to the decrepitude of old age. 

 To my greetings and inquiries as to his service, he said, "0 

 Shaler, that was a coup that was a coup !" All that had hap- 

 pened since seemed to have passed from his crapulous mind. 

 I could not bring him back to his deeds as a soldier ; the triumph 

 of his pupil pursued him altogether. He was a real master. 



From my curiously elaborate training in arms I had certain 

 advantages in that it exempted me, as my father judged it 

 would, from being put upon or bothered with challenges. I was 

 but once thus troubled, and then most unreasonably. It hap- 

 pened that the person who supposed he was offended chose a 

 sensible fellow for his second, who, as he explained to me, soon 

 convinced his principal that he was playing the fool. On two 

 occasions, before I was twenty years old, boys took men's 

 parts in those days, I served as second to friends, and in both 

 instances easily adjusted the troubles without much parley. 

 The first occasion was when a silly cousin of mine with too 

 much wine in him challenged a well-known duellist, James 

 Jackson, who, as a general, fell at Perryville. Fortunately, I 

 knew Jackson as well as a boy of eighteen may know a man of 

 twice his years. I made my plea to him to give my kinsman an 

 easy way out. At first he was obdurate, saying that he would 

 have his life, he had, indeed, reason to be vexed, but in 

 the end he told his second to "fix it up" with me. My good, I 

 may say indeed affectionate, relations with Jackson had begun 

 a year before in a like absurd business in a ball-room in Frank- 

 fort. I had accidentally stepped into the mess made on the 

 floor by the breaking of a bottle of champagne, which he as 

 manager was trying to have cleaned up. With a sharp word, he 



