With the, to modern taste, odd blending of personality with editorial anonymity that characterized the professional duel throughout, “We, the junior editor,” retorts: “This letter affords strong corroborative evidence of our opinion expressed in our article of the 27th ultimo, and from Mr. J. H. Pleasants’ communication, evidently understood by him to the extent we intended—namely, that facts within our knowledge proved him to be a COWARD. “He appeals to the confines of age and dependent children. Let it be! We shall not disturb him.” Ten years after the correspondence and the “affair” to which it was the prelude, an eminently respectable citizen of Richmond told my husband of a street-corner scene, date of February 21, 1846, the day on which the last contribution to the war of words above recorded, appeared in the _Enquirer_. “One of the groups one saw on all sides, in heated discussion of the newspaper controversy and the probable outcome, was collected about Doctor ——, then, as now, pastor of the —— —— Church. He read out the last sentences of Ritchie’s ultimatum with strong excitement. Then he struck the paper with his finger, and said: ‘That settles the matter! Pleasants must fight! There is no way out of it!’ “One of the party ventured a remonstrance to the effect that ‘Pleasants was not a hot-headed boy to throw his life away. He might be made to see reason, and the matter be smoothed over,’ etc. “The minister broke in warmly, with— “‘Impossible, sir, impossible! No honorable man could sit down quietly under the insult! He must fight! There is no alternative!’ “Now,” continued the narrator, “I am not a church-member, and I had no overstrained scruples against duelling at that time. But it sent a queer shock through me when I heard a minister of the gospel of peace take that ground. I felt that I could never go to hear him preach again. And I never did! I heard he made a most feeling allusion to poor Pleasants in a sermon preached shortly after his death. That didn’t take the bad taste out of my mouth.” How general was the sympathy with the incautiously expressed opinion of the divine can hardly be appreciated now that the duello is reckoned among the errors of a ruder age. The city was in a ferment for the three days separating the 21st of February and the 25th, on which the memorable encounter took place. If any friend essayed to reconcile the offending and offended parties, we have no note of it. The nearest approach to arbitration recorded in the story of the trial is in the testimony of a man well-acquainted with both parties, who was asked by one of Mr. Ritchie’s seconds to “go upon the ground as a mutual friend.” He testified on the stand: “I declined to do so. I asked him if the matter could be adjusted. I asked if Mr. Ritchie would not be willing to withdraw the epithet of ‘coward,’ in case Mr. Pleasants should come upon the field. His reply was that Mr. Ritchie conscientiously believed Mr. Pleasants to be a coward.”