anxious to have a chance in the new sport, mainly for the reason that he
was not able to thoroughly respect himself so long as he had not killed
or crippled somebody in a duel or been killed or crippled in one
himself.

At that time I had been serving as city editor on Mr. Goodman's Virginia
City "Enterprise" for a matter of two years. I was twenty-nine years
old. I was ambitious in several ways, but I had entirely escaped the
seductions of that particular craze. I had had no desire to fight a
duel; I had no intention of provoking one. I did not feel respectable,
but I got a certain amount of satisfaction out of feeling safe. I was
ashamed of myself; the rest of the staff were ashamed of me--but I got
along well enough. I had always been accustomed to feeling ashamed of
myself, for one thing or another, so there was no novelty for me in the
situation. I bore it very well. Plunkett was on the staff; R. M. Daggett
was on the staff. These had tried to get into duels, but for the present
had failed, and were waiting. Goodman was the only one of us who had
done anything to shed credit upon the paper. The rival paper was the
Virginia "Union." Its editor for a little while was Tom Fitch, called
the "silver-tongued orator of Wisconsin"--that was where he came from.
He tuned up his oratory in the editorial columns of the "Union," and Mr.
Goodman invited him out and modified him with a bullet. I remember the
joy of the staff when Goodman's challenge was accepted by Fitch. We ran
late that night, and made much of Joe Goodman. He was only twenty-four
years old; he lacked the wisdom which a person has at twenty-nine, and
he was as glad of being _it_ as I was that I wasn't. He chose Major
Graves for his second (that name is not right, but it's close enough; I
don't remember the Major's name). Graves came over to instruct Joe in
the duelling art. He had been a Major under Walker, the "gray-eyed man
of destiny," and had fought all through that remarkable man's
filibustering campaign in Central America. That fact gauges the Major.
To say that a man was a Major under Walker, and came out of that
struggle ennobled by Walker's praise, is to say that the Major was not
merely a brave man but that he was brave to the very utmost limit of
that word. All of Walker's men were like that. I knew the Gillis family
intimately. The father made the campaign under Walker, and with him one
son. They were in the memorable Plaza fight, and stood it out to