"Are there no duels ever fought in this part of the country?"
"Scarcely any since Burr shot Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was one of our greatest men, and his death excited a feeling throughout the Northern States which put down the practice almost entirely; and I certainly think it a step forward in real civilization."
"Do you mean to say that it is with you as with us, where, if a man becomes so involved in a quarrel that he is challenged, it is against him and almost ruin to him whether he fights or does not fight? Or is public opinion decidedly in favor of the man who does not fight, and against the man who does? For instance, suppose you were challenged yourself?"
"A man can't say beforehand what he would do in an emergency of the kind; but my impression is that I should not fight, and that the opinion of society would bear me out."
"But suppose a man insulted your wife or sister?"
"It is next door to impossible that an American gentleman should do such a thing; but if he did, I should consider that he had reduced himself to the level of a snob, and should treat him as I would any snob in the streets,--knock him down, if I was able; and if I wasn't, take the law of him: and if a man had wronged me irreparably, I fancy I should do as these uncivilized Southerners themselves do in such a case,--shoot him down in the street, wherever I could catch him. What sense or justice is there in a duel? It is as if a man stole your coat, and instead of having him put into prison, you drew lots with him whether you or he should go."
"But suppose a man was spreading false reports about you; suppose he said you were no gentleman, or that you had cheated somebody?"
"Bah!" replied Benson, dexterously evading the most important part of the question, "if I were to fight all the people that spread false reports about me, I should have my hands full. There is a man in this room that slandered me as grossly as he could four years ago, and was very near breaking off my marriage. That fat man there, with all the jewelry--Storey Hunter."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the other, really surprised, for he had just seen Mrs. Benson conversing with the ponderous exquisite, apparently on most amicable terms.