THE LAW OF THE LAND. XIV. DEBTS OF HONOR. BY WM. ARCH. McCLEAN. LANGUAGE has many words and ex pressions possessing a twofold mean ing, the one a mockery of the other. A spade is a spade when it is in the hands of an honest laborer at the rate of a dollar a clay for the use made of it in building the highways of the world. Again, a spade is a spade when it may be ace high in either a royal or a bobtail flush in a game in which the only right of recovery of the winner will be in what is another mockery in terms —a court of honor. v The world's phraseology in speaking of this court is necessarily peculiar. It is sup posed to be convened in session for the pro tection of the rights of gentlemen only. It is supposed to owe its existence to a very fine appreciation upon the part of gentlemen only of what, honor is. It is a high culture reached by gentlemen only. Ordinary honest men, who pay cash down for every equivalent and who are born American kickers against paying bills for which no equivalent has been received, are too commonplace to understand the technicalities of this court. They lack the appreciation of the nice distinctions of a gentleman's life. The peculiar character of this fine-grained article that makes up the life of a gentleman and his sense of honor is well illustrated by a remark, often gratuitously donated to a de luded people, that the best study of mankind is that gained at a gaming table; that a gentleman never knows his man as well as on the other side of a gaming table, and that the debts of honor there liquidated are a cheap outlay for the culture received. Cheap is hardly the word, however, in which any

thing is to be qualified about such ways of such gentlemen. The culture of knowing your man is almost as wonderful as to know thyself, and the many specious reasons self will use to con vince self the way self wants to be convinced. The culture of knowing men has much to do with driving the world along, and its countless industries and great organizations, which feed, clothe and give employment to the inhabitants thereof. In all the great affairs of life it is of incalculable advantage to know an honest, reliable man. By a finesse of reason it is of course conceivable that this knowledge can grow out of the art and culture of knowing the difference be tween a gentleman, possessing a sense of honor in playing only the cards dealt him and paying his debts of honor, and a black leg on the opposite side of the gaming table. It is often reasoned by those possessing this higher appreciation of the nice distinc tions of the culture of a gentleman's life, that there is always an equivalent, a value received in the I O U's of debts of honor. Courts of law in many cases of damages recognize pain, mental anguish and suffering as an element for which it is possible to base a recovery. It is true that gentlemen who contract debts of honor are given, by way of consideration, all kinds of mental conditions, from the joy and hilarity of winning to the peculiar kind of anguish each one experiences in his own way upon losing. Along the same line of finesse reasoning, such ought to be sufficient consideration, together with the spice and fun of the game, to make of force and effect all debts of honor, if not in courts of law, at