Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papershour appointed for the—the little affair—was, have webeen awake hours and hours sooner; risen before daylight,with a faint hope, perhaps, that MacTurk mighthave come to some arrangement with the other side; atseven o’clock (confound his punctuality!) heard his cabwheelat the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim,fresh, jolly, and well shaved; driven off with him in thecold morning, after a very unsatisfactory breakfast ofcoffee and stale bread-and-butter (which choke, somehow,in the swallowing); driven off to Wormwood Scrubsin the cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning; steppedout of the cab, where Mac has bid the man to halt on aretired spot in the common; in one minute more, seenanother cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen,one of whom has a case like MacTurk’s under his arm;—looked round and round the solitude, and seen not onesingle sign of a policeman—no, no more than in a rowin London;—deprecated the horrible necessity whichdrives civilized men to the use of powder and bullet;—taken ground as firmly as may be, and looked on whilstMac is neatly loading his weapons; and when all ready,and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three—havewe even heard Captain O’Toole (the second of the otherprincipal) walk up, and say: “Colonel MacTurk, I amdesired by my principal to declare at this eleventh—this twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he seeshe has been wrong in the dispute which has arisen betweenhim and your friend; that he apologizes for offensiveexpressions which he has used in the heat ofthe quarrel; and regrets the course he has taken?” Ifsomething like this has happened to you, however greatyour courage, you have been glad not to fight;—howeveraccurate your aim, you have been pleased not tofire.On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two,what hundreds of thousands—I may say, what millionsof Englishmen, were in the position of the personagehere sketched—Christian men, I hope, shocked at thedreadful necessity of battle: aware of the horrors whichthe conflict must produce, and yet feeling that the momentwas come, and that there was no arbitrament leftbut that of steel and cannon! My reader, perhaps, has202