The first duel I ever witnessed was one which, at the expiration of forty years, is too vividly engrafted upon memory to be forgotten. I was then a satcheled schoolboy; and before six o'clock on a beautiful summer morning, was wending my way, slowly, of course, to the abiding place of the country pedagogue at whose feet I was being indoctrinated. A gentleman was sitting on a log of timber, and in him I recognized Lieutenant V---- of the--th, a frequent visitor and guest at my father's house. He spoke to me, and I sate down upon the beam, and a bullet he had been rolling carelessly on the log of timber, was interchanged between him and me for five minutes. He started suddenly on perceiving three gentlemen advance from an opposite direction, put the ball in his waistcoat pocket, and bade me hastily "good-morning." I watched him--saw him join the strangers, and the whole party turned into a rope-yard. I rose from the beam--shouldered my satchel, and as I passed the place where the gentlemen had disappeared, I looked through the open gate. Although not more than three or four minutes had elapsed, the preliminary preparations for a duel had been completed, and my late companion on the log of timber confronted his antagonist at the customary distance of a dozen paces. At the moment I peeped in, the seconds delivered a pistol to each combatant--stepped two or three yards back--and the words "Ready, fire!" were rapidly pronounced. The reports were so simultaneous that it seemed as if one shot only had been discharged; and as, for a second or two afterward, both gentlemen remained standing, I fancied all was right; but I was fatally mistaken--the discharged weapon dropped from V----'s hand, and he tottered and fell forward. The seconds raised him to a sitting posture, and a little man hitherto concealed behind the hedge, came forward hastily. He laid his finger on V----'s pulse, and then looked at the pupil of the eye, and in a low voice muttered, "All is over!" For many a month afterward that brief sentence sounded in my ear, and the falling man was present in imagination. But before manhood came, an intimacy with some amiable young Galway gentlemen at the Dublin University, and a short probation in a Southern militia regiment wrought a happy change. The organ of hearing, as Byron says, became "More Irish and less nice" and a twelvemonth's sojourn in that land of promise, which lieth between the Shannon and Atlantic, completed the cure. Like many an unnecessary appeal to arms, this fatal affair, in which a young and gallant officer lost his life, originated in a trifling misunderstanding. In the same barrack, and at a very short time after this fatal meeting (spring of 1807) one of the most lamentable affairs, which in the annals of dueling is recorded, unfortunately took place. I allude to the fatal encounter between Boyd and Campbell. The sad story is simply told.