While I was shaving this morning at eight o’clock, I witnessed from the front window an encounter in the street nearly opposite, between William C. Bryant and William L. Stone; the former one of the editors of the _Evening Post_, and the latter editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_. The former commenced the attack by striking Stone over the head with a cowskin; after a few blows the men closed, and the whip was wrested from Bryant and carried off by Stone. When I saw them first, two younger persons were engaged, but soon discontinued their fight. The next day Bryant made a public statement of this incident, pointing out the gross provocation that he had received, but apologizing to his readers for having taken the law into his own hands. Particularly as there developed some doubt whether Col. Stone was the author of the attack, he could never hear the matter referred to without showing his chagrin and regret. But Bryant had no sooner left the office for Europe than it became plain that Leggett had no such scruples. In one brief paragraph he managed to call the editor of the _Star_ a wretch, liar, coward, and a vile purchased tool who would do anything for money. The “venomous drivel” of the _Commercial Advertiser_ might sometimes require notice, he wrote a few days later, but his contempt for the editor was “so supreme that to us, personally, he is as if he were not--a perfect non-entity.” In the autumn Assembly campaign Leggett shotted his guns, and on Sept. 23 and 24 let off broadsides that shook the town. He accused the _Daily Advertiser_ of “a vile untruth”; he called the editor of the _American_ a “detestable caitiff,” a “craven wretch, spotted with all kinds of vices,” and “a hireling slave and public incendiary”; while he characterized the _Courier and Enquirer_ as a blustering, bullying sheet, reeking with falsehood, pandering to the vulgar, profligate, impudent, inane, and inciting men to riot and bloodshed. On Sept. 26 Leggett was able to fill a column with answers. “The editor is deranged,” said the _American_; he should be “committed to Bedlam,” averred the _Gazette_; “a writ _de lunatico_” is needed, chimed in the _Courier_; this, said the _Star_, “is too true to make a jest of”; and the Boston _Atlas_ professed horror at “the ferocious, mad, and bloody words of this desperate print.”