I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, who has acted
and written since the battle with a true warrior's courtesy, and with
a great deal of good logic too, that the battle was a drawn one. The
advantage was all on Mr. Sayers's side. Say a young lad of sixteen
insults me in the street, and I try and thrash him, and do it. Well, I
have thrashed a young lad. You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one
of your own size? But say the lad thrashes me? In either case I walk
away discomfited: but in the latter, I am positively put to shame. Now,
when the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas released,
the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly blind of one eye, and speedily
afterwards was blind of both. Could Mr. Savers have held out for three
minutes, for five minutes, for ten minutes more? He says he could. So
we say WE could have held out, and did, and had beaten off the enemy
at Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn't come up. The opinions differ
pretty much according to the nature of the opinants. I say the Duke and
Tom could have held out, that they meant to hold out, that they did hold
out, and that there has been fistifying enough. That crowd which came
in and stopped the fight ought to be considered like one of those divine
clouds which the gods send in Homer:

"Apollo shrouds
The godlike Trojan in a veil of clouds."

It is the best way of getting the godlike Trojan out of the scrape,
don't you see? The nodus is cut; Tom is out of chancery; the Benicia Boy
not a bit the worse, nay, better than if he had beaten the little man.
He has not the humiliation of conquest. He is greater, and will be loved
more hereafter by the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the godlike
Trojan? Suppose he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven