When the pistol is handed to you, you are not allowed to test the trigger-pull, but you can make a shrewd guess of its strength as you cock it, if you lift the hammer high and let it drop clean back into the bend.
A heavy trigger-pull gives a much louder click in cocking than a light one. I bought Ira Paine’s hair trigger Smith & Wesson revolver, which he used for his dangerous feats on the stage, and I hardly hear any sound in cocking it,—the trigger-pull is so light.
Byron, speaking of duelling, in Don Juan, says:
It has a strange quick jar upon the ear,
That cocking of a pistol, when you know
A moment more will bring the sights to bear
Upon your person, twelve yards off or so;
A gentlemanly distance, not too near
If you have got a former friend or foe;
But after being fired at once or twice,
The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.
Canto IV.: Stanza XLI.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
OUGHT DUELLING TO BE ABOLISHED?
It is a mistake to think that it is to the universal satisfaction that duelling is no longer allowed in England.
Probably it was abolished, owing to some agitation by a few cranks, like that against stag-hunting and Sunday amusements, and even at the time of the abolition, there were many who thought duelling was a necessity and its abolition a mistake.