Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: honor." No duel came out of this. Kremerwas a ridiculous person, of whom Daniel Webster, writing to his brother Ezekiel, in New Hampshire, said : " Mr. Kremer is a man with whom one would think of having a shot about as soon as with your neighbor, Mr. Simeon Atkinson, whom he somewhat resembles." And Clay, eventually having been very much ashamed of threatening to challenge poor Kremer, subsequently expressed his regret therefor in these words: "I owe it to the community to say that whatever I may have done, or by inevitable circumstances might be forced to do, no man in it holds in deeper abhorrence than I do that pernicious practice (of duelling). Condemned as it must be by the judgment and the philosophy, to say nothing of the religion, of every thinking man, it is an affair of feeling about which we cannot, although we should, reason." Nevertheless Clay actually did later than this meet on the field of battle John Randolph, of Roanoke. During the celebrated debate on the Panama Congress, in Adams's administration, Randolph, with his usual boldness of vituperation, characterized the administration, which included Adams and Clay, as the " coalition of Blih'l and Black George—the combination unheard of until now of the Puritan with the blackleg." That Clay should fairly boil over with wrath when he heard this is not to be wondered at. He challenged Randolph, and the two men met, exchanged shots, and both missed. Randolph, it is said, was dressed in a loose flowing coat, and noone could say where in its voluminous folds Randolph's spare and attenuated body was disposed. A bullet touched the coat. At the second fire Clay's bullet inflicted a wound in the garment, whereupon Randolph fired his pistol into the air and said, " I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay," and then they shook hands ...