strings: advice given many years afterward to a young offcer condemned to be court-martialed for quarreling: " No man resolved to make most of himself can spare time for personal contentions. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right and yield lesser though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite."