The Russian duel is not, and hes never been, the innocuous affair which it has become in France. Two Russia's greatest poets, Pushkin 9nd Lermentoff, perished in duels more than half @ century ago, and as they both fell when less than thirty years of age, the consequent loss to Russian literature is incalculable. Russians of lesser note have been falling in duels ever since and are falling at this moment almost as fast as People expected that th the constitutional regime would put an end to duelling, essentially " product of militarism, and certainly the first two Dumas, bellicose as they were in some seemed to encourage these expectations, for save on one occasion when an officer called out deputy who had (and, owing, I offering © satisfactory explain his words, the duel did not take place) their proceedings wore not marked by any adjournments to the "field of honour." It has been reserved for the third Dama, the aristocratic Dama, to encourage this practice, and, oddly enough, Professor Milyookoff, the learned and pacific of the Kadete, has been the innocent centre around which moderate and reactionary duellista have revolved ever since the session began. First of all Count Bobrinsky, one of th" leaders of the Right, challenged the professor for contradicting him, and then M. Gntchoff, the leader of the (entre, called plying that he, Gutch-Koff, was a liar.. A reactionary fanatic outside the Duma then offered to fight Milyoukoff with his fists, whereupon military admirer of Milyoukoff wrote from Vladivostok offering to fight the reactionary fanatic. I have lost count of the number of affairs of this kind in joukoff has been involved, ithout any fault of his own, and it speaks highly for his tact that he managed to get out of all of them without fighting, bat at the same time without leaving it in the power of his bitterest opponents to call him coward.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.