"And yet, what nobility or moral courage was there in the man who gave or accepted the challenge?  Just think of what the consequences might be, and what the ground of the quarrel often was.  A hasty word, or even a mere thoughtless breach of etiquette, would bring a challenge; and the person called out must not decline to meet his challenger, and give him `satisfaction,' as it was called, in the shape of a pistol bullet, under pain of being cut by all his friends and acquaintances as a coward.  So a man who was a husband and father would steal away from his home early in the morning, and go out to some lonely spot and meet the man whom he had offended, and be murdered in cold blood, and carried back a bleeding corpse to his miserable widow and fatherless children, just because he could not bear to be called a coward by the world.  And to call this `satisfaction!'  The devil never palmed upon his poor deluded slaves a more transparent lie.