quote:

Don't meddle with old unloaded firearms. They are the most deadly and unerring things

that have ever been created by man. You don't have to take any pains at all with them;

you don't have to have a rest, you don't have to have any sights on the gun, you don't

have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure

to get him. A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in

three-quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his mother every

time at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been

boys armed with old rusty muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had

been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes me shudder.
- Advice to Youth speech, 4/15/1882


I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which

carried a ball like a homopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an

adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It had

only one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our 'conductors' practiced

awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was

safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things,

she came to grief.
- Roughing It