III.
“Are you aware,” said one of my friends, “that these are the secrets of the sword that you are revealing to us?”
“Only,” I replied, “those secrets which I happen to know. But really you have hit upon the right word, for the secrets of the sword are innumerable. It is a Proteus in the hand that orders it, and obeys the least motion of the will with the quick docility of an attendant spirit. It can be the insolent and overbearing bully, it can be the wary and diplomatic courtier. At one moment it is all menace, a keen attacking point, the next it changes to a protecting shield.
“But alas for our poor faithful servant; to-day the sword and its secrets are almost forgotten, or at least but little valued. There was a time, and a time not so very remote, when a knowledge of sword-play was considered one of the credentials of a gentleman. Apply that test now; apply it to yourselves. We have here in this room a large number of gentlemen met together, and I do not doubt that each one of you could make good his title to gentle birth, and that in more ways than one; and yet how many of you would be seriously embarrassed if you were required to manipulate a sword! How many of you, if you will allow me to say so, would make but a very pitiful exhibition of yourselves!”
I saw by the smile that went round the room that my remarks were only too well founded.
“Of course,” I continued, “I know the usual answer:—‘True,’ you will say, ‘we may be duffers, but we are not afraid of fighting.’ Yes, you are not afraid of fighting, that is to say you are willing to be killed by the first bully, who chooses to force a quarrel upon you. Brave words truly! But after all is it worth while to be the owner of so many talents, youth and strength, a cultured mind, a healthy body, and yet not even to know how to defend your life?
“I am reminded of the story told of a certain General. When one of his officers, who disagreed with him on the policy of some strategic movement, had said:—‘Well, General, when the time comes I will show you that I know how to die.’ ‘Don’t be a fool, Sir,’ replied the General, ‘your duty is not to see that you get killed, but to take care that you don’t’.”
“Surely,” suggested one of my friends, “the real difficulty is that it takes years of conscientious and continual application to make even a moderate fencer.”
“Quite a mistake, I assure you.”
“Why, only the other day I happened to pick up one or two books about fencing and glanced through them. I assure you, they really are appalling.”
“There we have it,” I exclaimed, “and with that word you go over bag and baggage to the enemy’s camp. You are not the first to be appalled, merely because the professors have omitted to caution the reader, that they cannot in the exercise of their craft afford to be otherwise than omniscient, and that their omniscience must be aired. It is because they are afraid of being taxed with ignorance, or of being rated as less men than their predecessors, that they insist on science at any price; science they must have, interminable and unmitigated science, and so they produce their laborious treatises, monuments of erudition, but as you say—appalling.
“For my part, after reading and rereading, with the most scrupulous attention, everything that has been written on the subject, I remain convinced of this, that if I were writing a manual of fencing my first object would be to get rid of the alarming jargon of technical terms, which are supposed to be indispensable—a formidable array, quite enough, I freely admit, to give pause to the most resolute, and to blanch the cheek of the keenest aspirant.”
“Ah, you are quite right,” said my host with the air of a man who had made the experiment. “How much the art and the professors too would have gained, if they had only studied simplicity, and taken the trouble to make themselves intelligible.”