what would you more? I was never born to be a gentleman, Mr. Vernon, never. I'm rich-I've my thousands per annum, got by an honest trade, and it wouldn't be prudent to risk at once the loss of my life and the enjoyment of so much money. If your poor dear dead father was alive, how would he be horrified at the thought of his old friend Joseph Tomkins standing up like a huge post to be shot at! I wonder he is still in his grave while such murderous doings are going on above ground. Think of your poor old father, and have pity upon me."

I grieve for you, Mr. Tomkins,” replied Vernon, "but there is no alternative. Clifford is determined to have satisfaction; you had therefore better put the best face you can upon the matter, and meet him. He's a dead shot, it is true, but you are well aware the best shots miss sometimes, and there is at least a possibility that your ball may hit. Should this be the case, even if you fall, you will escape the mortification of dying unrevenged. Do you think you could hit a puncheon at eight paces?"

"May be I could if I fired, but I shouldn't have the courage to pull the trigger, if I knew 'twas a man that stood before me instead of a puncheon."

"Never fear; your sense of wrong will nerve your finger, if it does not animate your heart. Don't be afraid of missing, man. I once knew a keen sportsman who fired at a barn-door, and shot a full-blown apple-tree. You may make as good a marksman."

"Dear, dear," cried Mr. Tomkins, in extreme alarm, "is there nothing you can do to bring matters to an amicable settlement? Do stand my friend for once. I'll remember it to my dying day, if you will. Don't turn away your head, but look upon me with compassion. I'm only a distiller, and was not brought into the world to be sent out of it like a valorous gentleman, of which I am none, with a hole drilled through my head or my heart by a leaden bullet. I'd willingly give Mr. Clifford a hundred pounds, and should not object to add another fifty if he's hard upon me-for I know he isn't overburthened with that sort of commodity-if he will forget and forgive."

"Such a proposal would make him frantic, for when his passion is roused he is as fierce as a young tiger: besides, it would be only adding insult to provocation. There is nothing to be done, my good friend, you must fight."

So saying, Vernon quitted the distiller, leaving him to chew the cud of repentance for having so rashly listened to the advice of friends, and sent a challenge to an accomplished manslayer, as he now considered his opponent, who would most likely make no more of sending him to his account than he would of squeezing a fly, which had impertinently buzzed about his aristocratic ears, between his finger and thumb.

After repeated interviews, it was at length settled that Mr. Tomkins and Clifford should meet on the second morning after the receipt of the former's challenge by the latter, at Chalk Farm. Meanwhile, a plan was proposed by Vernon, which was finally entered into by Mr. Tomkins' friend, whom Vernon happened to know. It was this: neither pistol was to be loaded with ball, but into Clifford's was to be put a pellet of soft dough, which was to be discharged at his adversary's head within three or four paces.

All the preliminary arrangements being made, the awful morning at length dawned

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big with the fate of" Tomkins and of Clifford, and those parties arrived at the ground. The sun, to use an old but classical image, was peeping from behind his curtain in the east, like a watchful lover from behind a thickset hedge, when they reached the scene of action.

Although it was a raw October morning, Mr. Tomkins approached the spot panting with his exertions, and reeking with his terrors like a seethed baron of beef on a Lord Mayor's festival. The steam ascended from him like the vapour from fermented grains, and enveloped him in a mist of his own engendering. The tears started into his eyes, his lips quivered, and he muttered to himself, "I'm a dead man ; what's to be done? Poor Mistress Joseph and the little Tomkinses, what will they do if I am sent on my road to heaven, of which I am as ignorant as the babe unborn? I an't in a fit state to die, I'm sure I an't, and suppose 1 should go to the devil, what a sad thing for a wealthy distiller and the father of a family!"

He paused a moment, and thus continued his soliloquy: :

"I shall never have courage to stand fire. I am brought like an ox to the slaughter, and yet if I am killed I shan't be murdered, but only be put to death like a gentleman. Is there nothing to be done," said he, turning to one of his friends, "to prevent mischief? I'm agreeable to anything."

His second interrupted him by reminding him of the folly of exposing his terrors to his adversary now they were upon the ground, and that every attempt at an accommodation had failed. But Mr. Tomkins' alarm was paramount over every other feeling, and he roared to the extreme pitch of his voice

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tone,"

"Mr. Clifford-Sir-I ax your pardon, on my knees I ax your pardon. I daren't stand to be fired at, indeed I daren't let us be friends: for mercy's sake, forgive me." Clifford pretended not to hear him; the poor agitated distiller rushed forward, and, dropping down on his knees before him, besought him to spare his life for the sake of his poor wife and four helpless babes. Sir," said Clifford, in a peremptory you demanded satisfaction, and you shall have it. I sought not this meeting; indeed I had no desire to meet a man of your resolution in such a deadly encounter; but you have cast an imputation upon my courage by calling me to the field, and I come here to prove to you that your call has not been made in vain. I am about to make you that reparation for your injured honour which you have demanded at my hands. This matter has now proceeded too far to admit of any temporising. You must instantly prepare to change shots with me."

“I can't prepare. I haven't the courage. I don't want no reparation. I have no doubt of Mrs. Joseph's virtue and of your integrity. I will never complain of my injured honour, indeed I will not. If I should be killed, for I hear you're a dead hand at a pistol, where will my honour be then? A fig for such a counterfeit token 'tis nothing better than a Brumajem ha'penny. I don't want to have nothing to do with honour. I'm better fitted to handle a stave than a pistol, for when I served as constable I received a vote of thanks from the parish for keeping the peace. You're a gentleman, Mr. Clifford, and I am satisfied." "But I am not, Sir; you have called my courage into question, and I am determined to prove to you that you have not to deal with such a rascal as you have presumed to take me for. Take your ground, Sir, and do not oblige me to think you the coward I should be unwilling to call you." “I know I'm a coward, Mr. Clifford, I know I'm a coward," cried the terrified man, still 66 his knees; upon but I didn't make myself, and am not therefore answerable for my infirmities. I know I am not

a man of mettle, therefore have mercy upon me, and prove that you are as generous as brave. We never had no valour in our family-never. I didn't come of a fighting stock. What would you have? My grandfather was but a poor man, who carried a knot on his shoulder for thirty-five years, but he was as honest a porter as ever plied at Temple Alley. My father was brought up in a charity-school, and has had 'dunce' pinned to his back many a time and oft, though he managed to leave me half a plum at his death. I am the first of the Tomkinses that was ever breeched in superfine Saxony, or that was ever booby enough to send a challenge after the fashion of gentlefolks; and if I'm spared now, I'll take good care it shall be the last. I'm a coward, there's no doubt of that, and 'tisn't worth spending powder and ball upon a coward. I can't help my nature, Mr. Clifford, for 'what's bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh,' as my grandam used to say when she chided me, with a grandmother's love, for being more stupid than my brother Thomas. That was a kind creature, that grandmother of mine, but how would she be scared if she could see me now!"

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He

Clifford took his position, and the halfdistracted Mr. Joseph Tomkins was placed or rather dragged in front of him within about four paces of his pistol, already elevated to the level of the distiller's brains. After standing a moment, his knees trembling under him, like the surface of an agitated custard, he suddenly burst from the hands of his friends, and hurried across the field, like a windmill upon rollers. was however soon overtaken panting and 'larding the lean earth," and brought back to his position. He was so terrified as to be scarcely conscious of his situation. He closed his eyes and snorted like a whale upon a shallow; still none of those votaries of fun by whom he was accompanied upon this jocose occasion entertained towards him one jot of sympathy. Though with countenances as lowering as a November dawn, their hearts were laughing under their waistcoats at the probable issue of the droll adventure in which they had become such willing agents.

The unhappy rectifier, at once of alcohol and of his wife's honour, stood utterly unconscious of the joke under which he was at that very moment suffering the tortures of purgatory. His flesh danced upon his bones as if it had been seared with a heated

gridiron, and the blood galloped through his veins at the rate of two leaps in a second. It would have moved a stone to see the distress of the half distracted husband, who would have willingly left his wife's reputation for ever to take care of itself, if he could but get out of his present dilemma without the chance of death by powder and ball.

Everything being now ready, a pistol was put into the hand of the terrified challenger, who stood before the challengee in speechless terror. The moment he grasped the weapon of death, which was cocked, with a convulsive twitch of the finger he pulled the unresisting trigger, and discharged the contents against the head of his second, who, finding his whiskers singed, and a clean shirt marred, staggered back and quitted his hold; but as the pistol had only been charged with powder, no other damage was done than that of singing his clothes and the hair that adorned his cheeks and upper lip, the latter of which being curled and well pomatumed, narrowly escaped a general conflagration. The gentleman, however, adroitly covered the imperilled mustachios with his broad palm, and thus saved from certain demolition those capillary ornaments. Meanwhile Mr. Tomkins took no notice of the disaster, being too much absorbed in his own fears to notice external objects. He stood rigid as a statue, with his eyes closed, his pistol arm extended, and his lips compressed, waiting to hear the dreadful sound that was, in all human probability, to be the signal for his exit from this world, in which he had been so comfortable, to one in which it was doubtful whether he should be equally happy, for the thought of death brought with it recollections which he would have been very reluctant to communicate to the officers of excise, when he found that he was likely to live for another term of years.

In the mean time the discharged pistol was reloaded without ball, and placed again in the challenger's hand, which was raised by his second towards the breast of the challengee, who, advancing sufficiently near to be sure of making his hit, at the word "Fire," discharged his pistol. Down dropped the man of grains like a slaughtered ox, with his mouth open to the utmost extremity of his jaws, his eyes staring, and his wits altogether gone. The dough pellet had struck him in the forehead, and whilst

he lay on the sward in a gentle deliquium, Vernon, who had attended Clifford in the character of second, blackened the spot with a small piece of moistened charcoal, reasonably conceiving that the fat champion of the still would, upon recovering from his panic, imagine himself fairly shot through the head.

The wits of Mr. Tomkins, such as they were, soon returned; and he lay upon the ground bellowing and groaning in a state of doubtful unconsciousness, declaring that he was killed, and supplicating heaven for mercy upon his poor soul.

A large shutter was now procured, and six sturdy labourers were engaged, at halfa-crown a head, to bear this prostrate “tun of man," with scarcely "half a kilderkin of wit," to the farm-house. A little pig's blood, which had been previously secured in a phial, was dropped upon his forehead and applied to the tips of his fingers, so that when he put his hand to his temples, he was confirmed in the belief that a ball had passed through them, so soon as he perceived the incarnadine hue with which he fancied they were dyed.

As the fallen champion lay on the shutter he continued his cries, and occasionally lurched so suddenly, that his six bearers, who with difficulty staggered under their colossal burthen, could scarcely prevent him from falling off, and thus risking the fracture of his bones and the bursting of his huge body. By constantly rubbing his face, he had so besmeared it with blood and perspiration, that by the time his bearers reached the farm, he looked positively ghastly. They at length got him into the house, and tilted him from the shutter upon a large bed, the sacking of which immediately gave way beneath so unusual a weight of human flesh, and he sank through the opening, with his legs sticking in the air, between which his head would most certainly have been thrust, but for that bulky portion of his outward man buttoned up in his waistcoat.

A mattress was now spread upon the floor; upon this the unwieldy Mr. Tomkins was stretched, still groaning and uttering piteous exclamations, yet in a manner so utterly incoherent that Vernon began to be seriously alarmed for the issue, until assured by one of the party present, who was a medical man, there was no danger; very justly observing, that cowards are never frightened to death.

This is no doubt philosophically true, for cowards are so much in the habit of being alarmed, that they do not feel the same sudden and severe shock with which alarm is invariably accompanied to a really brave spirit. A brave man when frightened (a matter of no common occurrence) can only be so by something under which the sternest courage must quail. On the contrary, a coward quails at the bare apprehension of danger; he is, therefore, too much accustomed to be frightened to die in consequence of it. Cowardice escapes injury from terror, because terror is congenial to it when courage might become its victim, because the power of terror is greater in proportion as the experience of it has been less.

Mr. Tomkins being now in a state of passive helplessness, was dosed with a few glasses of his own gin, or rather of gin that had been his own. Notwithstanding that his poor stupid head was filled with images of worms, skulls, and cross-bones, the moment the bottle was placed to his mouth, with a sort of mechanical eagerness he imbibed the spirit in copious mouthfuls, quite belying the maxim that doctors never take their own physic, for it will be remembered that gin is a panacea among the vulgar; and this inspiration of his own manufacture speedily produced the effect of a composing draught, sending the slaughtered man, for so he fancied himself, asleep, and thus stilling his bellowing, though it set him snoring with a vehemence scarcely less deafening. The perspiration rolled from him in streams, his wig escaped from his slippery forehead, and he looked for all the world like a dying Polyphemus with his eye out.

The snoring distiller was now taken home in his own carriage, which had been sent for for this purpose. Vernon and Clifford were permitted to remain with the wounded man, to watch by him during the night, as they were extremely anxious to see how the farce would end.

Mrs. Tomkins had been informed in the mean while that her husband had received a probably fatal wound in a duel, fought in vindication of his own honour and her reputation. At this unexpected but by no means unwelcome information, she evinced far more surprise than concern; for she had not given her poor dear man, as she familiarly termed him, credit for spirit enough

to put his soft head in the way of a hard bullet. As, however, he had jeoparded his scanty stock of brains for her sake, she prudently shut herself up in her bed-room, so that no one could perceive how she was affected by Mr. Joseph's pitiable condition. In the privacy of her chamber, she could be just as sorrowful as suited her temper, and this was far more mirthful than mournful. She had a much stronger tendency to smiles than to tears, the former of which she practised upon all occasions where the opportunity of being observed was afforded; holding it an uncontrovertible axiom of woman's philosophy, that tears mar the beauty which smiles cannot fail to adorn. In truth, she at the present moment regretted more the now unavoidable termination of her intimacy with Clifford, than the probably fatal result, as she was led to imagine, of his encounter with her unfortunate husband, for she was fully impressed with the idea that the latter was mortally wounded. She committed Mr. Tomkins very contentedly to the care of Vernon, Clifford, and the doctor, the latter a family apothecary, who sold his physic as the distiller did his gin, by measure, and many a gallon had he crammed down the throats of the family who had committed their bodies to his keeping, or I should say better, to his physicking.

The poor terrified husband slept for about eight hours without once opening his eyes. When brought from the field of strife, a shell had been ordered from a neighbouring undertaker, a visiting acquaintance of the Tomkinses, in which Mr. Joseph was put, after having been regularly shrouded, and placed before a large pier glass in the drawing-room. The only light in the apartment was that which was permitted to enter through a round hole in the shutter, and fell immediately upon the mirror. The instant the unwieldy sleeper awoke, he started from the shell, and beholding the reflection of his squalid countenance, and the round black spot upon his temples, he uttered a frightful yell, falling at the same moment with a terrific crash upon the floor, and overturning the shell, a table, and six chairs. For some moments he did not utter a word. At length he muttered, in a tone distinctly audible—

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Right through the head-the coffin and the shroud-there can be no doubt-plump through my temples-my skull drilled like

an empty puncheon-clean through my brain. What a body mine for the worms so full of healthy life! to be put under the earth like a bag of fermented jelly, which the cook has discarded from her kitchen, as no longer fit to be mingled with her kitchen-stuff.”

He paused, groaned, and, withdrawing his eyes from the mirror, fixed them upon the lower extremity of the shroud, which was not succinct, but covered him to the very toes. He recommenced his melancholy soliloquy.

"I am no more of this world, surely! I cannot be alive-a man with a bullet through his sconce, cannot be alive;it's quite impossible. And is this death? Is this to be among the angels? I am all alone, like a slug in an empty flower-pot! I seem to feel-and yet how should I?a man with half-an-ounce of lead in his brains couldn't feel-I don't feel-it's all fancy."

He at this moment knocked his nose against the edge of the shell, which made it contract like a squeezed worm, or a pocket telescope.

"And yet I do feel-my nose tingles as it was wont when Mrs. Joseph used to tweak it in the vehemence of her indignation. There is life then in death, or I'm no dead man. I know not what to think; by dad, I don't. Am I dead, or am I not? that is the question,' as the man said in the play. I should not have a shroud on, and be coffined, if I were alive. I am certainly dead-but how little fit to die! Had I lived longer, I should have loved spirits less. Oh it was too soon to call me from my comforts -a cruel call for me, as well as for poor Mrs. Joseph and the dear babbies. I shall never more behold her never more see them the chubby little dears! I shall never more visit the still-I'm still enough now! What a blockhead to fight! My name only will be remembered! This will be stuck over the shops of those who retail my rectified whiskey, when I shall be a sort of Lord Mayor's feast for worms!"

He carefully felt about his person, to ascertain if the worms had yet begun their banquet. He then sat up, and wept; but

seeing a basin of water near him, he plunged his hand into it, and mechanically raising it to his forehead, removed the black spot of charcoal. When he discovered that there was really no hole in his skull, of which a more minute examination in the glass soon convinced him, he shouted at the full pitch of his voice-"I am not dead!" and springing upon his feet, deliberately washed his face, divested his body of the shroud, and, seating himself in a chair, cried exultingly-"Thank God! I am a man again!”

The whole truth suddenly flashed upon his mind, and he perceived that he had been made the subject of a practical joke.

Vernon and Clifford, now thinking that the jest had been carried sufficiently far, advanced and congratulated Mr. Tomkins upon his fortunate escape. He looked very sheepish, from a consciousness of the want of spirit he had manifested in his late encounter with Clifford. The two friends offered him their congratulations with a mock gravity, which added extremely to his mortification. But when the whole truth reached the ears of Mrs. Tomkins, she flew into a violent rage, knocked her fair fists against the bed-posts, cracked a pitcher with the rapid momentum by which she jerked her foot out of its ordinary line of progression, and tore an India muslin dressing-gown, by hitching it in the fractured handle. She railed against poor Tomkins, to whom she applied all the vituperative epithets in her vocabulary, 'and for many weeks after twitted him with the adventure at Chalk Farm.

Clifford did not repeat his visits to the mercurial spouse of the wealthy distiller; and she, therefore, shortly directed the focus of her attractions towards a more humble suitor. A few months after the duel, it became the general gossip of the neighbourhood, that Mrs. Tomkins had absconded with a young tallow-chandler ; and that Mr. Tomkins had consequently got rid of a great plague: he was therefore vastly indebted to the man of wax (for all his candles were not tallow) for the abduction, with her own free will and consent, of the compliant Mrs. Joseph Tomkins.