Third.  Time:  On Thursday evening at five o’clock, if you can get it so; but in no case to be at a greater distance of time than Friday evening at five o’clock.

Fourth.  Place:  Within three miles of Alton, on the opposite side of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you.

Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty to make at your discretion; but you are in no case to swerve from these rules, or to pass beyond their limits.

TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

Springfield, October 4, 1842.

Dear speed:—­You have heard of my duel with Shields, and I have now to inform you that the dueling business still rages in this city.  Day before yesterday Shields challenged Butler, who accepted, and proposed fighting next morning at sunrise in Bob Allen’s meadow, one hundred yards’ distance, with rifles.  To this Whitesides, Shields’s second, said “No,” because of the law.  Thus ended duel No. 2.  Yesterday Whitesides chose to consider himself insulted by Dr. Merryman, so sent him a kind of quasi-challenge, inviting him to meet him at the Planter’s House in St. Louis on the next Friday, to settle their difficulty.  Merryman made me his friend, and sent Whitesides a note, inquiring to know if he meant his note as a challenge, and if so, that he would, according to the law in such case made and provided, prescribe the terms of the meeting.  Whitesides returned for answer that if Merryman would meet him at the Planter’s House as desired, he would challenge him.  Merryman replied in a note that he denied Whitesides’s right to dictate time and place, but that he (Merryman) would waive the question of time, and meet him at Louisiana, Missouri.  Upon my presenting this note to Whitesides and stating verbally its contents, he declined receiving it, saying he had business in St. Louis, and it was as near as Louisiana.  Merryman then directed me to notify Whitesides that he should publish the correspondence between them, with such comments as he thought fit.  This I did.  Thus it stood at bedtime last night.  This morning Whitesides, by his friend Shields, is praying for a new trial, on the ground that he was mistaken in Merryman’s proposition to meet him at Louisiana, Missouri, thinking it was the State of Louisiana.  This Merryman hoots at, and is preparing his publication; while the town is in a ferment, and a street fight somewhat anticipated.

But I began this letter not for what I have been writing, but to say something on that subject which you know to be of such infinite solicitude to me.  The immense sufferings you endured from the first days of September till the middle of February you never tried to conceal from me, and I well understood.  You have now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months.  That you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for without you could