August 12
Certainly Albert is the best fellow in the world. I had a strange scene with him yesterday. I went to take leave of him, for I had taken it into my head to spend a few days in these hills from where I now write to you. As I was walking up and down his room, my eye fell upon his pistols. “Lend me those pistols,” said I, “for my journey.” “By all means,” he replied, “if you will take the trouble to load them; they only hang there pro forma.” I took down one of them, and he continued: “Ever since I nearly paid for my extreme caution, I will have nothing to do with these things.” I was curious to hear the story. “I was staying,” said he, “some three months ago at a friend’s house in the country. I had a brace of pistols with me, unloaded; and I slept without anxiety. One rainy afternoon I was sitting by myself, doing nothing, when it occurred to me—I do not know how—that the house might be attacked, that we might require the pistols, that we might—in short, you know how we sometimes imagine things when we have nothing better to do. I gave the pistols to the servant to clean and load. He was dallying with the maids and trying to frighten them, when the pistol went off—God knows how! The ramrod was still in the barrel; and it went straight through the ball of the right thumb of one of the girls and shattered it. I had to endure her lamentations and pay the surgeon’s bill; so, since that time, I have kept my weapons unloaded. My dear fellow, what is the use of prudence? We can never guard against all possible dangers. However,”—now you must know I am very fond of him until he says “however”; is it not self-evident that every universal rule must have its exceptions? But he is so exceedingly anxious to justify himself that if he thinks he has said anything too precipitate or too general or only half true, he never stops qualifying, modifying, and extenuating till at last he appears to have said nothing at all. On this occasion Albert was deeply immersed in his subject; I finally ceased to listen to him, and became lost in reverie. With a sudden motion I pointed the mouth of the pistol to my forehead, over the right eye. “What are you doing?” cried Albert, turning the pistol away. “It is not loaded,” said I. “Even so,” he asked with impatience, “what is the meaning of this? I cannot imagine how a man can be so mad as to shoot himself; the very idea of it shocks me.”
“Oh, you people!” I said, “why should you always have to label an action and call it mad or wise, good or bad? What does it all mean? Have you fathomed the motives of our actions? Can you explain the causes and make them inevitable? If you could, you would be less hasty with your ‘labels.’”
“But you will admit,” said Albert, “that some actions are vicious, let them spring from whatever motives they may.” I granted it, and shrugged my shoulders.
“Still,” I continued, “there are some exceptions here too. Theft is a crime; but the man who commits it from extreme poverty to save his family from starvation, does he deserve pity or punishment? Who shall throw the first stone at a husband who in just resentment sacrifices his faithless wife and her perfidious seducer; or at the young girl who in an hour of rapture forgets herself in the overwhelming joys of love? Even our laws, cold and pedantic as they are, relent in such cases, and withhold their punishment.”
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