The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-05-15
For the National Fra.
WHAT IT COSTS TO Know A COUNTESS.
BY MRS. BELL SMITH.


PART "
Upon a raw, misty morning, for summer, a
number of gentlemen were busy, an an open
field, measuring solemnly space of ground,
while they discussed with earnestness some
matters connected with this little piece of sur
veying. 1t was not by any means a cheerful
proceeding. The country of France is not en-
livening at any time. The evidences Of life
happy rural life, so beautiful in Engiand--are
wanting. The luxuriance, the picturesque
abundance, of our own land is not to be found,
and one looks over hills without forests, and
plains without hedges or meadows, with
dreary, desolate feeling, foreign to what should
be the accompaniment to gentle nature.
No love of nature, no search for the pictur-
esque, however, brought the above mentioned
gentlemen from their beds to this foggy, DESC
late field, at six o'clock in the morning. 1t is
difficult to realize, but it is nevertheless true,
that two of them were bent upon shooting at
each other. They had pistols, of lie Pages
own, powder OF the finest quality, little leaden
balls, bright percussion caps, and, above all,
they had four friends, as they called in the
code of honor, who measured off the ground,
loaded the pistols, and were prepared to say
when the caps should be exploded, the powder
ignited, and the two leaden bullets sent, with
deadly swiftness, to the proposed living targets,
crushing through flesh, bones, muscles, and
nerves. And they had surgeon and an as
sistant surgeon, who were prepared, should
al hot
rate, to probe and torture, and endeavor, by
patient and laborious science, to undo what
had been so easily accomplished.
All this will, l suppose, some day be ira
dictionary. But can any one, then or now, give
us the philosophy of the practice? l can
imagine q man, wearied of life, being willing
to risk worthless remnant, if, in such risk, a
deadly enemy could be removed. But, the
person who fights duel is, from the very ma
ture of things, one generally alive to matters
of this earth. He could not have such an in
tense hatred, were it otherwise. But even the
misanthrope has some one dependent upon
him, who will be dragged down in his fall.
You do not pause to think, my dear friend,
that the leaden ball, which goes crushing
through that beating heart, pierces not one, but
many. 1t kills, with an agony no pen can de-
scribe, the poor, old, gray-haired mother, who
i suffers may deaths in experiencing one, in the
slow, sorrowing years which lie between that
event and her grave. 1t brings doyn the doat-
| Ing father, who, for this one, has fought many
stout battles with the world. What are his
WIDE possessions now, that he cannot get his
hesvily-ladened heart from the six fest of
ground known as your grave. The bright eye of
your beautiful sister is dimmed, and grief writes
wrinkles on her downy cheek long before time
can trace a record. And long years after the
shocking, fnghtful event, she is Weakened in the
dead hour of night, by the mother she watches
oyer, to hear her trying to choke down sobs.
| that the memory of her poor, murdered bow will
wiring from the heart. And all this misery, for
what? That your silly honor may be satisfied
blythe settlement of some point of punctilio.
Then again. Why go to this trouble, when
our frail tenure upon life is such, that great
colleges that are founded, books written and
collected in huge libraries, and the best intel,
lects laboriously trained, to keep body and soul
| comfortably together. Oh, my punctilious
youth Have you escaped teething, measles,
and whooping. cough; have you survived break
neck races, tumbles from apple-trees, and cramps
in the water, to die such an ugly, th-pulling
sort of death as this ? Are there not thou
sand and one disorders wandering about the
earth, ready to seize you-any one OF which Is
pleasanter, more Christian-hke, and digni6ed,
than death from the hands of that grim-faced
gambler, or disordered Count, who, with all the
hair and impudence on his face, has yet no
castle anywhere, save one built at the public
expense, with strong arrangements to keep In
thieves, instead of keeping them out, as his
plundering ancestors once proposed. Would
you not prefer the cholera, plague, or yellow
fever, to this uncalledfor absurd disorder, known
| duaI2 Or if Won would rnv froc, xhaao /
have known you TO do, what say you to a gen.