"Why, Sir, what do you mean?" said the lady.
"I mean, Madam, that the spirit of dueling is not the spirit of Christ."
"The Doctor's remarks about the dueling card pleased me more than anything else," rejoined the lady.
"That part of the Doctor's remarks I disapproved most," we rejoined.
"Well," she continued, "I am a professing Christian, and a member of the Baptist Church. I have several sons, and have always taught them to defend their characters according to the _code of honor_, and, Sir, if your ideas are correct then I confess I know very little about Christianity."
"Very likely, Madam, and I think none of us know much about the true spirit of it, the way we are going on. But, my dear lady, what are the Doctor's grievances when compared with those of Christ and his Apostles? and yet what would you think of the idea that they carried deadly weapons to defend their characters and persons with? Preposterous, do you say? 'The servant is not above his Lord.' If the Master might not do so how much less the servant. And furthermore, how does the Doctor's case stand in the constellated light of the Master's declaration, 'My kingdom is not of this world, else my servants would fight.'"
"Well," said the lady again, in a half desponding tone, "if that's the true doctrine I don't know what we should do if we should undertake to carry it out in this world. But then I can't believe it, and that's all there is about it with me, I can't believe it."
"There's the trouble, Madam, we don't really and practically believe what we profess except when the truth conserves our self-interest, or our convenience. When otherwise we can not trust God for results, but take matters out of his hands and control them ourselves, and for ourselves. And behold what dirty, wicked work we make of it sometimes."
Just then the wealthy planteress left, as though with a new idea in her head and heart.
But to quote the Doctor a little more. He said: "After the war I intend giving myself to the legal profession, and shall not return to the pulpit. I am keeping a _spotted book_. All persons who refuse to go into the army, or evade the conscript law by any dodge or subterfuge whatever, their names shall go down in the spotted book, to receive my special attention after the war, personally, professionally, and politically, and I swear it here and now; they shall be hunted in town, in the city, through the wilderness, out of the country, and peradventure a worse fate may befall them!"