Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1870-07-30
Wounded Honor,

II is in the incapacity Of a truly hon
orable man to be dishonored by another,
that a civilized mind sees the exquisite
absurdity of what was called the code of
honor. It put the best man at the mercy
Of the worst Here, for instance, was a
hulking bully and dead shot, who took a
dislike TO some man infinitely his superi-
or. lie met him at table, and he threw
a glass of wine in his face, or be spat at
him, or he pulled his nose, and it was
straightway held that the honor Of the
assaulted man had been injured, and could
only be repaired by giving the bully the
chance to murder him and ruin his tami-
ly. Nothing more preposterous is con-
ceivable; and it was that 50 long per-
picked, and, TO a certain degree, still per
plexes, civilization. This theory of hon
or said: "If a man pulls your nose, he
has mortally insulted you, and nothing
but blood can atone. IIo! for the field
of honorv" Common sense says: "If
man pulls your nose, he breaks the peace.
Call policeman, and-l1o /! for the sta
tion-house !"
OF course if you don't choose TO call
policeman, but instinclivcly do your best
to thrash the bully, nobody will COM
plain. But you are not dishonorcd by
him, even though he pulled your nose
off, and when you tried to punish him,
doubled you up and left you senseless in
the gutter. Conld drunken bully, or
sober bully, dioho onor Sir Isaac Newton
by pulling his nose? Would Mr.. Bry-
ant be dishonored if somebody gave him
the he? 1t is by lying that he would be
dishonored, not somebody's saying that
he lied. If, therefore, every man be the
guardian OF his own honor, and that hon
or can be touched only by himself, it Is
idle to speak of somebody else dishonor-
ing him. Somebody else may exasper-
ate him--may madden him, by exciting
his jealousy, as Iago maddened Othello-
but somebody else can not dishonor him !;
and, in such cases as we are considering,
honor is always invoked, and the injury
to honor is ciaboratcly alleged, because
it is universally felt that if jealousy is to
be allowed to shoot at discretion, there
will be a good deal more shooting than
society can safely tolerate.
All intelligent people will agree that
the honor OF the marriage tie must, in
reason, be equal upon both sides; but
everybody knows that it is not consider
ed so in fact Take any average jury
that would acquit a man for shooting a
man who had 'iniured his honor" and it
would wink at the same husband injur-
ing his wife's honor in precisely the same
way. These are subjects not to be easily
mentioned; but they are well under
stood. and it is not for men, as class,
to vociferate too loudly about matrimo-
NAL honor. Gibbon caustically says of
the goddess who presided over the peace
of marriages "ller epithet of Niriplaca,
the appeaser Of husbands, too clearly in
dicates on which side submission and re-
pentance were always expected" And
was the offcnse supposed TO come usually
from the same side?
The honor of marriage is mutual. Hus-
bard and wife are alike bound by it. But
the detection of either dishonors that one
only, and not the other. The other may
be sorely grieved or humilated-may be
even excited by passion to what is called
frenzy. But that is the possible effect
of all strong excitement, and it is not
changed in character, because it is called
the madness of outraged honor. 1t is
very possible that one man, under the
same circumstances, would do what an
other does. A man of O:hello's tenn
perament would be affected as Othello
was. But when public opinion author
lied persons laboring under strong ex-
citement to shoot other people, it is only
necessary to establish strong excitement
to justify shooting.-Harper'S Wagd=ine.