To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped, cooling.  I then resumed saying, “As I supposed.  I do not admit having written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a point, and then base important action upon your assumption.  You might deeply regret it afterwards.  In my published Address to the People, I notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any article would be given without the consent of the writer.  I therefore cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it.”

“If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?”

“I must decline to say.”

“Then, by—­, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly.”

“Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice is, that you regard them as ‘charges’ at all, when their context, both at their beginning and end, show they are not.  These words introduce them:  ’Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think might result in showing some of the following points.’  Then follow eleven specifications, and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation ‘might exonerate those who are generally believed guilty.’  You see, therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this you seem to have overlooked.”

While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider candidly the thoughts contained in my words.  He insisted upon it that they were charges, and “By—­,” he would make me take them back as charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted.  He replied, “if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations,” whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in my face with more cursings and epithets.

When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than that after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me.