has cried "Stop!"--as it had been agreed
should be done in case either man was badly wounded. A foul was
consequently claimed, the seconds drew their pistols, and a general
battle was narrowly averted. After many weeks Henry recovered.

A great number of historic duels were over politics. Such a one was the
fight which took place in 1843, between Mr. Hueston, editor of the Baton
Rouge "Gazette" and Mr. Alcee La Branche, a Creole gentleman who had
been speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and was running
for Congress. Mr. La Branche was one of the few public men in the State
who had never fought a duel, and in the course of a violent political
campaign, Hueston twitted him on this subject in the columns of the
"Gazette," trying to make him out a coward. Soon after the insulting
article appeared, the two men met in the billiard room of the old St.
Charles Hotel, and when La Branche demanded an apology, and was refused,
he struck Hueston with a cane, or a cue, and knocked him down. A duel
was, of course, arranged, the weapons selected being double-barreled
shotguns loaded with ball. At the first discharge Hueston's hat and coat
were punctured by bullets. He demanded a second exchange of shots, which
resulted about as before--his own shots going wild, while those of his
opponent narrowly missed him. Hueston, however, obstinately insisted
that the duel be continued, and the guns were loaded for the third
time. In the next discharge the editor received a scalp wound. It was
now agreed by all present that matters had gone far enough, but Hueston
remained obdurate in his intention to kill or be killed, and in the face
of violent protests, demanded that the guns again be loaded. The next
exchange of shots proved to be the last. Hueston let both barrels go
without effect, and fell to the ground shot through the lungs. Taken to
the Maison de Sante, he was in such agony that he begged a friend to
finish the work by shooting him through the head. Within a few hours he
was dead.

The old guide book from which I gather these items cites, also, cases in
which duels were fought over trivial matters, such, for instance, as a
mildly hostile newspaper criticism of an operatic performance, and an
argument between a Creole and a Frenchman over the greatness of the
Mississippi River.

Professor Brander Matthews tells me of an episode in which the wit
exhibited by a Creole lawyer, in the course of a case in a New Orleans
court