Feeling very much dispirited, and with the soles nearly worn off my
boots, I sat down on a bench beside the sea, or river--for some call
it one thing, some the other, and the muddied hue and freshness of the
water, and the uncertain words of geographers, leave one in doubt as
to whether Montevideo is situated on the shores of the Atlantic, or
only near the Atlantic and on the shores of a river one hundred and
fifty miles wide at its mouth. I did not trouble my head about it; I
had other things that concerned me more nearly to think of. I had a
quarrel with this Oriental nation, and that was more to me than the
greenness or the saltness of the vast estuary that washes the dirty
feet of its queen--for this modern Troy, this city of battle, murder,
and sudden death, also calls itself Queen of the Plata. That it was
a very just quarrel on my part I felt well assured. Now, to be even
with every human being who despitefully uses me has ever been a
principle of action with me. Nor let it be said that it is an
unchristian principle; for when I have been smitten on the right or
left cheek (the pain is just the same in either case), before I am
prepared to deliver the return blow so long a time has often elapsed
that all wrathful or revengeful thoughts are over. I strike in such
a case more for the public good than for my own satisfaction, and am
therefore right in calling my motive a principle of action, not an
impulse. It is a very valuable one too, infinitely more effective than
the fantastical code of the duellist, which favours the person who
inflicts the injury, affording him facilities for murdering or maiming
the person injured. It is a weapon invented for us by Nature before
Colonel Colt ever lived, and it has this advantage, that one is
permitted to wear it in the most law-abiding communities as well as
amongst miners and backwoodsmen. If inoffensive people were ever to
cast it aside, then wicked men would have everything their own way and
make life intolerable. Fortunately the evil-doers always have the fear