redit with the
populace, my lady.'

'Rank me one of the populace then! I hate duelling and rejoice that it
is discountenanced.'

'The citizens, and not the populace, I think Mr. Sullivan Smith means,'
Diana said. 'The citizen is generally right in morals. My father also
was against the practice, when it raged at its "prettiest." I have heard
him relate a story of a poor friend of his, who had to march out for a
trifle, and said, as he accepted the invitation, "It's all nonsense!"
and walking to the measured length, "It's all nonsense, you know!"
and when lying on the ground, at his last gasp, "I told you it was all
nonsense!"'

Sullivan Smith leaned over to Whitmonby and Dacier amid the
ejaculations, and whispered: 'A lady's way of telling the story!--and
excuseable to her:--she had to Jonah the adjective. What the poor fellow
said was--' He murmured the sixty-pounder adjective, as in the belly of
the whale, to rightly emphasize his noun.

Whitmonby nodded to the superior relish imparted by the vigour
of masculine veracity in narration. 'A story for its native sauce
piquante,' he said.

'Nothing without it!'

They had each a dissolving grain of contempt for women compelled by
their delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant
accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable. For to see
insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing
the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal
gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan
Smith would have let the expletive rest.

Major Carew Mahoney capped Mrs. Warwick's tale of the unfortunate
duellist with another, that confessed the practice absurd, though he
approved of it; and he cited Lord Larrian's opinion: 'It keeps men
braced to civil conduct.'

'I would not differ with the dear old lord; but no! the pistol is the
sceptre of the bully,' said Diana.

Mr. Hepburn, with the widest of eyes on her in perpetuity, warmly
agreed; and the man was notorious among men for his contrary action.

'Most righteously our Princess Egeria distinguishes her reign by
prohibiting it,' said Lady Singleby.

'And how,' Sullivan Smith sighed heavily, 'how, I'd ask, are ladies to
be protected from the bully?'

He was beset: 'So it was all for us? all in consideration for our
benefit?'

He mournfully exclaimed: 'Why, surely!'

'That is the funeral apology of the Rod, at the close of every barbar