“And after Grant came,” said Mrs. Billups, “we used to laugh as we watched the Union sentries marching up and down that walk, right over our plate.”

* * * * *

Among the items not already mentioned, of which Columbus is proud, are the facts that she has supplied two cabinet members within the past decade—­J.M.  Dickinson, Taft’s Secretary of War, and T.W.  Gregory, Wilson’s Attorney General—­and that J. Gano Johnson, breeder of famous American saddle horses, has recently come from Kentucky and established his Emerald Chief Stock Farm in Lowndes County, a short distance from the town.

But items like these, let me be frank to say, do not appeal to me as do the picturesque old stories which cling about such a town.

There is, for instance, the story of Alexander Keith McClung, famous about the middle of the last century as a duellist and dandy.  McClung was a Virginian by birth, but while still a young man took up his residence in Columbus.  His father studied law under Thomas Jefferson and was later conspicuous in Kentucky politics, and his mother was a sister of Chief Justice John Marshall.  In 1828, at the age of seventeen, McClung became a midshipman in the navy, and though he remained in the service but a year, he managed during that time to fight a duel with another midshipman, who wounded him in the arm.  At eighteen he fought a duel near Frankfort, Kentucky, with his cousin James W. Marshall.  His third duel was with a lawyer named Allen, who resided in Jackson, Mississippi.  Allen was the challenger—­as it is said McClung took pains to see that his adversaries usually were, so that he might have the choice of weapons, for he was very skillful with the pistol.  In his duel with Allen he specified that each was to be armed with four pistols and a bowie knife, that they were to start eighty paces apart, and upon signal were to advance, firing at will.  At about thirty paces he shot Allen through the brain.  His fourth duel was with John Menifee, of Vicksburg, and was fought in 1839, on the river bank, near that city, with rifles at thirty yards.  Some idea of the spirit in which duelling was taken in those days may be gathered from the fact that the Vicksburg Rifles, of which Menifee was an officer, turned out in full uniform to see the fight.  However they were doubly disappointed, for it was Menifee and not McClung who died.  It is said that a short time after this, one of Menifee’s brothers challenged McClung, who killed this brother, and so on until he had killed all seven male members of the Menifee family.

McClung fought gallantly in the Mexican War, as lieutenant-colonel of the First Mississippi Regiment, of which Jefferson Davis was colonel.  Though he remained always a bachelor it is said that he had many love affairs.  He was a hard drinker, a flowery speaker, and a writer of sentimental verse.  It is said that in his later life he was exceedingly unhappy, brooding over the lives he had taken in duels—­fourteen in all.  His last poem was an “Invocation to Death,” ending with the line: