“You may often hear men say:—‘I do that in the fencing room, I should be very sorry to attempt it in a serious fight.’
“Then why attempt it at all? If your judgment tells you that the stroke is good, it is good for all occasions. If it is bad it cannot be justified in any case.
“Always bear in mind that you must pay attention to all thrusts which might prove fatal in a serious encounter, and then if some day you have the misfortune to find a real sword in your hand, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are fore-armed by habit against known and familiar dangers. I cannot emphasise this point too strongly.
“In short, the refusal to acknowledge hits however low is a dangerous and a gratuitous mistake. Why should a thrust aimed in that direction not be of its kind as brilliant and meritorious as another? Why should it be boycotted? Is there any reason for this mysterious taboo?”
“The old master who used to teach us fencing at school,” remarked my host, “would fall foul of you with a vengeance, if he heard you talk like that.”
“I do not mean for a moment,” I replied, “that I have any preference for hits in the low line, but rather that I am more afraid of them, because I have fenced too often with fencers good and bad not to know how necessary it is to be on one’s guard against the dangers of wild play.
“For instance, those who make a practice of straightening their arm as they retire nearly always drop their hand, and the point of their weapon, whether they wish it or no, is necessarily directed towards the low line. It is equally inevitable that the same part should be threatened by those who rightly or wrongly reverse the lunge by throwing the left foot back on your attack, at the same time stooping forwards, so as to let your point pass over their head; and ignorant fencers nearly always hit you there, quite innocently and unintentionally.
“You should therefore guard that part of the body as strictly as you guard the chest, and, by a parity of reasoning, when you meet an adversary who neglects to protect the low line annoy him in that region frequently.
IV.
“It often happens that things that are most neglected in one age become the ruling fashions of the next, just as things once highly honoured may often fall into complete discredit.