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1Author:  Cooke John Esten 1830-1886Add
 Title:  The youth of Jefferson, or, A chronicle of college scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: ON a fine May morning in the year 1764,—that is to say, between the peace at Fontainebleau and the stamp act agitation, which great events have fortunately no connection with the present narrative,—a young man mounted on an elegant horse, and covered from head to foot with lace, velvet, and embroidery, stopped before a small house in the town or city of Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. “You insulted a lady in my presence yesterday evening, and I demand from you a retraction of all that you uttered. I am not skilled in writing, but you will understand me. The friend who bears this will bring your answer. “For you know you begin `Mr. Hoffland!' as if you said, `Stand and deliver!'—I have read your note, and I am sure I shan't be able to write half as well. I am so young that, unfortunately, I have never had an affair, which is a great pity, for I would then know how to write beautiful long sentences that no one could possibly fail to understand. “Your note is not satisfactory at all. I did not quarrel with your opinion of yourself, and you know it. I was not foolish enough to be angry at your declaring that you wer engaged to some lady already. You spoke of a lady who is my friend, and what you said was insulting. “Stop!—I didn't say I was engaged to any lady: no misunderstanding. “I do not understand your note. You evade my request for an explanation. I think, therefore, that the shortest way will be to end the matter at once. “Oh, Mr. Denis, to shoot me in cold blood! Well, never mind! Of course it's a challenge. But who in the world will be my `friend'? Please advise me. You know Ernest ought not to—decidedly. He likes you, and you seemed to like Miss Lucy, who must be a very sweet girl as she is Ernest's sister. Therefore, as I have no other friend but Ernest, I should think we might arrange the whole affair without troubling him. I have been talking with some people, and they say I have `the choice of weapons'—because you challenged me, you know. I would rather fight with a sword, I think, than be shot, but I think we had better have pistols. I therefore suggest pistols, and I have been reading all about fighting, and can lay down the rules. “Your note is very strange. You ask me to advise you whom to take as your second; and then you lay down rules which I never heard of before. I suppose a gentleman can right his grievances without having to fight first and marry afterwards. What you write is so much like joking, that I do n't know what to make of it. You seem to be very young and inexperienced, sir, and you say you have no friend but Mowbray. “Joking, my dear fellow? Of course I was joking! Did you think I really was in earnest when I said that I was so handsome, and was engaged already, et cetera, and so forth, as one of my friends used to say? I was jesting! For on my sacred word of honor, I am not engaged to any one—and yet I could not marry Lucy. I am wedded already—to my own ideas! I am not my own master—and yet I have no mistress! “I am very glad you were joking, and I am glad you have said so with manly courtesy—though I am at a loss to understand why you wished to `tease' me. But I do n't take offence, and am sure the whole matter was a jest. I hope you will not jest with me any more upon such a subject—I am very hasty; and my experience has told me that most men that fall in duels, are killed for this very jesting. “Your apology is perfectly satisfactory.—But I forgot! I made the apology myself! Well, it's all the same, and I am glad we have n't killed each other—for then, you know, we would have been dead now.
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