I regard you as the lowest-down thief that ever--" "Don't you use that word again! By -- --, I'll take you by the neck and--" Harris came rushing out, and just as the two were about to grapple he pushed himself between them and began to implore-- "Oh, Dean, don't, _don't_--now, Mr.Smith, control yourself! Oh, think of your family, Dean!--think what a scandal--" But they burst out with maledictions, imprecations and all the hard names they could dig out of the rich accumulations of their educated memories, and in the midst of it the man shouted-- "When _gentlemen_ come to this house, I treat them _as_ gentlemen.

When people come to this house with the ordinary appetites of gentlemen, I charge them a dollar and thirty cents for what I furnished you; but when a man brings a hell-fired Famine here that gorges a barrel of pork and four barrels of beans at two sittings--" Sage broke in, in a voice that was eloquent with remorse and self-reproach, "I never thought of that, and I ask your pardon; I am ashamed of myself and of my friend.

Here's your thirteen dollars, and my apologies along with it." [_Dictated March 12, 1906._] I have always taken a great interest in other people's duels.

One always feels an abiding interest in any heroic thing which has entered into his own experience.
[Sidenote: (1878.)] In 1878, fourteen years after my unmaterialized duel, Messieurs Fortu and Gambetta fought a duel which made heroes of both of them in France, but made them rather ridiculous throughout the rest of the world.

I was living in Munich that fall and winter, and I was so interested in that funny tragedy that I wrote a long account of it, and it is in one of my books, somewhere--an account which had some inaccuracies in it, but as an exhibition of the _spirit_ of that duel, I think it was correct and trustworthy.