this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than
to invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and
thus to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which
never otherwise could have illustrated their deaths? I remembered,
indeed, the words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had
offered at the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young
passenger on board his ship), who had informed against him at the
Custom-house on his arrival in port, and had thus effected the
confiscation of his ship, and the ruin of the captain's family. The
vengeance, and it was all that circumstances allowed, consisted in
coming behind the young man clandestinely and pushing him into the deep
waters of the dock, when, being unable to swim, he perished by
drowning. 'And the like,' said the captain, when musing on his trivial
vengeance, 'and the like happens to many an honest sailor.' Yes,
thought I, the captain was right. The momentary shock of a pistol-
bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save the wretch after all from the
pangs of some lingering disease; and then again I shall have the
character of a murderer, if known to have shot him; he will with many
people have no such character, but at worst the character of a man too
harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in protecting his
property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him, where is the
shadow even of vengeance? Strange it seemed to me, and passing strange,
that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf of letting this
man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as inexorably, doomed
him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the fact is, and I
began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any means to take
an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial standard;
and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge. Whilst I
was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether I should
or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this monster, and