Gazette publications :: :: University of Virginia Library

A challenge comes. A challenge? mercy
From one as hot as Hotspur Piercy—
A challenge! what? to fight a duel?
I'd live ten years on water gruel,
Rather than stand up to be shot at,
Like a racoon that can't be got at.

You may shoot him—what's that to me,
That I receive or give phlebotomy?
The profit and loss of both are equal,
I shall gain nothing in the sequel.
Will not the world approve your courage?
Will that procure me food or forage?

Mac Millan the ecclesiastic,
Will burn me with religious caustic;
Tell all the people that the devil,
Has bound me hand and foot to evil.
Can I avoid the horrid fury
Of Presbyterian judge and jury?
No. No. 'Tis best t' avoid the sin,
And sleep as usual in a whole skin.

Besides; the thing is no degraded—
The lowest classes have invaded
The duel province. What reputation
When the scum and worst of the nation,

Can fight, and say—“We men of honor”—
It is a burlesque; I would soone
Put my head i'th' fire, than on a level,
Be placed, with every silly devil
That fights a duel now-a-days—
The thing was once a thing of praise,
When noble knights and mounted esquires,
With lances and with warlike whiskers,
Fought for the honour of fair ladies,
If all is true that sung and said is.
But what pretence has this same codhead,
Or I myself with pistol loaded;
He but a pedlar, a mere trot-bogger,
I but a simple pettifogger;
What right have we t' usurp a province
Sacred to valor and to love once;
To measure weapons in such battle,
Who are but ordinary cattle?

Shew me your ancestry and knighthood,
Which those must do who fight would,
With crests of arms, escutcheons,
Mottos, devices Welsh, or Dutch ones.
Deduce your pedigree from Orson,
Valentine or some such whoreson;
Shew you are of the breed of War'ick
Who killed a mad cow at a hay rick.
Then I admit without more question,
Your right to chivalry and fustian.

'Tis true there may be found such mortals
Whom nature in her phrenzy curtails,

Of goodness and of mental merit,
Like a mad devil or foul spirit;
Who out of time have had a licence,
To put down reason, and lay by sense,
To cut society asunder,
And make the modestest knock under,
The death of such is but a small loss,
Whether by the duel or the gallows.

Shall I make these my model, whose skull
To myself and others may be useful,
Who has spent a term of thirty years,
To put my mental powers in geers,
School, college, academy,
All to replenish the head of me;
And many a midnight lucubration
To make me one of the first o' th' nation?

What the result of the encounter,
When I fall down as flat's a flounder
Shot dead? and only to be buried,
Remains when coroner has enquired.
Or, if by accident, or aiming,
I have the luck, 'tis all the same thing,
To put a ball in your belly, what the use?
I cannot make of you a goose.
Or turn you to a woodland turkey,
That houshold men may knife and fork ye;
Convert you to a salted salmon,
Or make of you a well-cur'd gamon.

Thus for the item of your cancase,
I set down nought. So 'tis a hard case
That I must kill you, or be kill'd
Ignobly on a private field,
Against the dictates of my conscience,
Obedient to the world's nonsense,
While those we leave behind on earth,
Make us the subject of their mirth.
In vain we hope for fame: our fate
Is forgotten at a day's date.
No muse funeral hangs our hearse,
With the bare fragment of a verse
Cast on the beech like dark sea-gulls,
We die th' unhallowed death of fools.

Take my advice, then let us solder
This feud of ours, before we're older;
Meet in the evening, take a bottle,
And leave disputes to Aristotle.

A Clergyman.