“Why, that's your object in fighting, why not in arguing?”
“Well, that's the object of most persons when they dispute, I know; but it is not mine. I wish to make a practical application of my doctrine.”
“Indeed! who do you mean to fight now?”
“It's not for me to fight, it's for you.”
“Me!”
“Yes; you have the preference by rights, though if you don't—and I'm rather sorry to think, as I told you at the start, that the only fault I had to find with you is that you're not a fighter—I must take your place and settle the difference.”
William Hinkley turned upon the speaker. The latter had laid down the violin, having, in the course of the argument, broken all its strings; and he stood now, unjacketed, and still in the chamber, where the two young men had been sleeping, almost in the attitude of one about to grapple with an antagonist. The serious face of him whose voice had been for war—his startling position—the unwonted eagerness of his eye, and the ludicrous importance which he attached to the strange principle which he had been asserting—conquered for a moment the graver mood of his love-sick companion, and he laughed outright at his pugnacious cousin. The latter seemed a little offended.
“It's well you can laugh at such things, Bill Hinkley, but I can't. There was a time when every mother's son in Kentucky was a man, and could stand up to his rack with the best. If he couldn't keep the top place, he went a peg lower; but he made out to keep the place for which he was intended. Then, if a man disliked his neighbor he crossed over to him and said so, and they went at it like men, and as soon as the pout was over they shook hands, and stood side by side, and shoulder to shoulder, like true friends, in every danger, and never did fellows fight better against Indians and British than the same two men, that had lapped muscles, and rolled in the grain together till you couldn't say whose was whose, and which was which, till the best man jumped up, and shook himself, and gave the word to crow. After that it was all peace and good humor, and they drank and danced together, and it didn't lessen a man in his sweetheart's eyes, though he was licked, if he could say he had stood up like a man, and was downed after a good hug, because he couldn't help it. Now, there's precious little of that. The chap that dislikes his fellow, hasn't the soul to say it out, but he goes aside and sneers and snickers, and he whispers things that breed slanders, and scandals, and bad blood, until there's no trusting anybody; and everything is full of hate and enmity—but then it's so peaceful! Peaceful, indeed! as if there was any peace where there is no confidence, and no love, and no good feeling either for one thing or another.”
“Really, Ned, it seems to me you're indignant without any occasion. I am tempted to laugh at you again.”
“No, don't. You'd better not.”