By what right, he asked, did Mr.Fortescue place on his window an appliance as dangerous as forked lightning, and as deadly as dynamite?
What was the difference between magnetized bars in a window and spring-guns on a game-preserve?
In conclusion, the writer demanded a searching investigation into the circumstances attending Guiseppe Griscelli's death, likewise the immediate passing of an act of Parliament forbidding, under heavy penalties, the use of magnetic batteries as a defence against supposed burglars.
This effusion (which he read in a marked copy of the paper obligingly forwarded by the enterprising editor) put Mr.Fortescue in a terrible passion, which made him, for a moment, look younger than ever I had seen him look before.

The outrage rekindled the fire of his youth; he seemed to grow taller, his eyes glowed with anger, and, had the enterprising editor been present, he would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour.
"The fellow who wrote this is worse than a murderer!" he exclaimed.

"I'll shoot him--unless he prefers cold steel, and then I shall serve him as I served General Griscelli; and 'pon my soul I believe Griscelli was the least rascally of the two! I would as lief be hunted by blood-hounds as be stabbed in the back by anonymous slanderers!" And then he wanted me to take a challenge to the enterprising editor, and arrange for a meeting, which rendered it necessary to remind him that we were not in the England of fifty years ago, and that duelling was abolished, and that his traducer would not only refuse to fight, but denounce his challenger to the police and gibbet him in his paper.

I pointed out, on the other hand, that the article was clearly libellous, and recommended Mr.Fortescue either to obtain a criminal information against the proprietor of the paper, or sue him for damages.
"No, sir!" he answered, with a gesture of indignation and disdain--"no, sir, I shall neither obtain a criminal information nor sue for damages.
The man who goes to law surrenders his liberty of action and becomes the sport of chicaning lawyers and hair-splitting judges.

I would rather lose a hundred thousand pounds!" Mr.Fortescue passed the remainder of the day at his desk, writing and arranging his papers.