Before, in this relation, I go to that meeting with Peg whereof I made account in the commencement of my story, it would be proper, I think, to notice a singular personality; one who, in intermittent fashion, will run in and out of my history like a needle through cloth. His sewing, however, will be of the friendliest, for he was as loyal to the General as any soul who breathed. Mordecai Noah, was the man's name. The General possessed a good previous acquaintance with him, although, as in the gentle instance of Peg, I was now to meet him for the earliest time. Noah was a writer of plays, and an editor; moreover, he was a gentleman of substance and celebration in New York City, where his paper did stout service for the General the hot autumn before. Noah also had been America's envoy to the Barbary States during the years of Madison. A Hebrew of purest strain, Noah was of the Tribe of Judah and the House of David, and the wiseacres of his race told his lineage, and that he was descended of David in a right line, and would be a present King of the Jews were it not that the latter owned neither country nor throne. However this may have been--and indeed a true accuracy for such ancestral cliff-climbing seems incredible, when any little slip would spoil the whole--Noah was of culture and quiet penetration; withal cunning and fertile to a degree. Also, I found his courage to be the steadiest; he would fight with slight reason, and had in a duel some twenty years before, with the first fire, killed one Cantor, a flamboyant person--the world might well spare him--on the Charleston racetrack, respectably at ten paces. I incline to grant space favorable to Noah; for he played his part with an integrity as fine as his intelligence, while his own modesty, coupled with that vulgar dislike of Jews by ones who otherwise might have named him in the annals of that day, has operated to obscure his name. The General told me of Noah somewhat at length on this morning, and just following the marching away of Pigeon-breast. He said he had sent for him, and that any moment might bring his footfall to the door. As he dwelt on Noah and his characteristics, I was struck by a word. It is worth record as a sidelight on his own nature. The General showed gusto and a lipsmacking interest in Noah's duel with the man Cantor, and ran out every detail as one runs out a trail. I could not forbear comment. “How is it,” said I, “you so dote on strife?” “I don't dote on strife. But when it comes to that, Major, war is as natural as peace.” “If it were so,” I returned, “still your admiration is entirely for war. You do not love peace.”