MATTHEW PERRY never fought a duel, or acted as a second, though duelling was part of the established code of honor among naval men of his school and age, and provocation was not lacking. On his return from the cruise in the _North Carolina_, an unpleasant episode occurred, growing out of idle gossip and the malignant jealousy felt towards an officer of superior parts by inferiors unable to understand one so intensely earnest as Matthew Perry. The manner in which Perry dealt with the man and the matter strengthens the claim we have made for him as an educator of the United States Navy. The conversation at a dinner party in Philadelphia filtered into the ear of a certain lieutenant in Washington, who reported that Captain M—— had spoken of Matthew Perry as “a d——d rascal.” Perry at once took measures to ferret out the anonymous slanderer. He first learned from Captain M—— the total falsity of the report, and then demanded from the disseminator of the scandal the name of his informant, which was refused. Thereupon Perry wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, pleading the general injury to the service from calumnies and unfounded reports. The Secretary wrote to the offending lieutenant to tell the truth. The latter pleaded the “privacy of his room,” “sacred confidence among gentlemen,” and declined to give the name of the person “understood” to have made the offensive remark to him. The Secretary, Hon. Samuel L. Southard, in a letter which is a model of terse English, read the offender a lecture on the unmanly folly of dabbling in idle gossip, and laid down the principle of holding the disseminator of reports responsible for the truth of statements made on the authority of another. The triangular and voluminous correspondence from Boston, Washington and Norfolk, from November 15th 1827, to April 1828, may be read in the United States Navy Archives. Perry demanded a court-martial, if necessary, to clear himself from unjust suspicion. It was not needful. His tenacity and perseverance conquered. The gossipper begged permission to withdraw his remark, and then crawled into oblivion.