"Perhaps I had better explain what is meant by refusing to join blades.
It means that, as soon as you have come on guard, you break away from
the engagement, and avoid crossing swords with your adversary, instead
of allowing the blades to remain in contact.
"This, I consider, was one of the most successful innovations of
what it is the fashion to call 'The New School'; and I am therefore
very far from sharing the opinions of the professors, who discover
in the practice the corruption of the best traditions of sword-play,
and declare that the refusal to join blades is equivalent to fencing
blindfold, and without judgment; it leads, they say, to mutual hits,
and deprives the fencer of one of the finest accomplishments he can
acquire, the power of judging the sword by touch.