“I’ll see that you never carry a handkerchief,” said Georgiana.  “So remember—­don’t you ever reach for one!”

“And the other day in Eddysville,” I went on, “two men fought a duel by going to a doctor’s shop and having him open a vein in the arm of each.  Just before they fainted from exhaustion they made signs that their honor was satisfied, so the doctor tied up the veins.  I see that you don’t believe it, but it’s true.”

“And why did they fight a duel in that way?”

“I give it up,” I said, “unless it was in self-defence.  We are a most remarkable society of self-defenders.  But if every man who fights in Kentucky is merely engaged in warding off a murderous attack upon his life, who does all the murderous attacking?  You know the seal of our commonwealth:  two gentlemen in evening dress shaking hands and with one voice declaring, ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’  So far as the temper of our time goes, these two gentlemen might well be represented as twenty paces apart, and as calling out, ’United, we stood; divided, you fall!’ Killings and duels!  Killings and duels!  Do you think we need these as proofs of courage?  Do you suppose that the Kentuckians of our day are braver than the pioneers?  Do you suppose that any people ever elevated its ideal of courage in the eyes of the world by all the homicides and all the duels that it could count?  There is only one way in which any civilized people has ever done that, there is only one way in which any civilized people has ever been able to impress the world very deeply with a belief in the reality and the nobility of its ideal of courage:  it is by the warlike spirit of its men in times of war, and by the peaceful spirit of its men in times of peace.  Only, you must add this:  that when those times of peace have come on, and it is no longer possible for such a people to realize its ideal of courage in arms, it is nevertheless driven to express the ideal in other ways—­by monuments, arches, inscriptions, statues, literature, pictures, all in honor of those of their countrymen who lived the ideal before the world and left it more lustrous in their dying.  That is the full reason why we know how brave a people the Greeks were—­by their peaceful ways of honoring valor in times of peace.  And that in part is why no nation in the world doubts the courage of the English, because when the English are not fighting they are forever doing something to honor those who have fought well.  So that they never have a peace but they turn it into preparation for the next war.

“And that is why, as the outside world looks in upon us to-day and sifts the evidence of whether or not we are a brave people, it does not find the proof of this in our homicides and duels, but in the spirit of our forefathers of the Revolution, in the soldiers of the wilderness and of Indian warfare, of the war of 1812, of the war with Mexico, at Cerro Gordo, at Buena Vista, at Palo Alto, at Resaca de la Palma.  Wherever the Kentuckians have fought as soldiers, many or few, on whatever battle-field, in whatsoever cause, there you may see whether they know what it is to be men, and whether they have an ideal of courage that is worth the name.