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 ridicule. And here I may be permitted a digression, to the intent of setting forth the sum and substance of my reflections of the ensuing half-hour, during which I tramped the woods in vain endeavour to assuage my irritation.

As between men, the laws of honourable combat demand that when you have disarmed your adversary, you shall return him his rapier, with a smile, a bow, and a courteous word. Not so in a duel with a woman. It is the business of her tongue — that, which, of all weapons, slips most readily from its sheath —first to disarm you, and then thrust home. But this ignorance of, or indifference to, the whole duty of the generous antagonist is not the least of the perils which you brave. The feminine brain is a thing of such excessive eccentricity that, without resource to the hackneyed simile of the kaleidoscope, I find myself wholly destitute of an adequate comparison. To follow, even approximately, a woman’s