Should I accept a challenge at dueling?

I have two objections to this duel matter.

The one is, lest I should hurt you; and the other is, lest you should hurt me.

I do not see any good it would do me to put a bullet through any part of your body. I could make no use of you when dead for any culinary purpose as I would a rabbit or turkey. I am no cannibal to feed on the flesh of men. Why, then, shoot down a human creature of which I could make no use? A buffalo would be better meat. For though your flesh may be delicate and tender, yet it wants that firmness and consistency which takes and retains salt. At any rate, it would not be fit for long sea voyages. You might make a good barbecue, it is true, being of the nature of a racoon or an opossum, but people are not in the habit of barbecuing anything human now. As to your hide, it is not worth taking off, being little better than that of a year-old colt.

It would seem to me a strange thing to shoot at a man that would stand still to be shot at, inasmuch as I have heretofore been used to shoot at things flying or running or jumping. Were you on a tree now like a squirrel, endeavoring to hide yourself in the branches, or like a racoon that after much eyeing and spying, I observe at length in the crotch of a tall oak with boughs and leaves intervening, so that I could just get a sight of his hinderparts, I should think it pleasurable enough to take a shot at you. But, as it is, there is no skill or judgment requisite to discover or take you down.

As to myself, I do not much like to stand in the way of anything harmful. I am under apprehension that you might hit me. That being the case, I think it most advisable to stay at a distance. If you want to try your pistols, take some object, a tree or a barn door, about my dimensions. If you hit that, send me word and I shall acknowledge that if I had been in the same place, you might also have hit me.

- Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816), Modern Chivalry, or the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O'Ryan his Servant