"C M Kornbluth - The Events Leading Down To Tragedy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Dr. Donge, by incredible, indeed almost impossible, labor has proved that the issue was one of veracity.
Colonel Fraskell intimated to Joseph Cooper, following a meeting of the Society of theCincinnati, that
Major Watling had been, in the words of Cooper's letter ofJuly 18,1789, to his brother Puntell in
Philadelphia, "drauin [drawing] the long Bow."2



O fatal indiscretion! For Puntell Cooper delayed not a week to "relay" the intelligence to Major Watling
by post, as a newsy appendix to his order for cordwood from the major's lot!



The brief, fatally terminated correspondence between the major and the colonel then began; I suppose
most of us have it [better change to "at least key passages of corresp." HS] committed to memory.



* DONGE, Dr. J.: supra, p. 774, u.
 The first letter offers a tantalizing glimpse. Watling writes to Fraskell, inter alia: "I said I seen it at the
Meetin the Nigh before Milkin Time by my Hoss Barn and I seen it are you a Atheist Colonel?" It has
long been agreed that the masterly conjectural emendation of this passage proposed by Miss Stolp in her
epoch-making paper3 is the correct one, i.e.: "I said at the meeting [of the Society of the Cincinnati] that
I saw it the night before [the meeting] at milking time, by my horse barn; and I [maintain in the face of
your expressions of disbelief that I] saw it. Are you an atheist, colonel?"



There thus appears to have been at the outset of the correspondence a clear-cut issite: did or did not
Major Watling see "it"? The reference to atheism suggests that "it" may have been some apparition
deemed supernatural by the major, but we know absolutely nothing more of what "it" may have been.



Alas, but the correspondents at once lost sight of the "point." The legendary Watling Temper and the
formidable Fraskell Pride made it certain that one would sooner or later question the gentility of the other
as they wrangled by post. The fact is that both did so simultaneously, on August 20, in letters that
crossed. Once this stone was hurled [say "these stones"? HS] there was in those days no turning back.
The circumstance that both parties were simultaneously offended and offending perplexed their seconds,
and ultimately the choice of weapons had to be referred to a third party mutually agreeable to the
duelists, Judge E. Z. C. Mosh.



Woe that he chose the deadly Pennsylvania Rifle!* Woe that the two old soldiers knew that dread arm
as the husbandman his sickle! Atsix o'clockon the morning ofSeptember 1, 1789, the major and the
colonel expired on the cward behind Brashear's Creek, each shot through the heart. The long division of
our beloved borough into Fraskellite and Watlingist had begun.