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Show Duel in Dark was not Fought 5 How Mike Walsh Proved United States Marshal Rhynders to Be a Coward In the Days Before the Civil War. "I am going to tell you of an incident which I look upon as being the most dramatic of any which has come under un-der my personal experience during a rather long life-time," said the late Parke Godwin, author, famous newspaper news-paper editor and son-in-law of William Wil-liam Cullen Bryant, a few years before his death in 1904. "It illustrates," he continued, "the intensity of factional and party animosity that prevailed in the United States before the days of the Civil war. We sometimes think that politics In these days is rough and brutal, but it is like a May morning to a blizzard when compared with the methods in vogue in ante-bellum times. "I suppose few of the present generation genera-tion of New Yorkers ever heard of Mike Walsh, and fewer still, perhaps, of United States Marsha1 Rhynders. "Mike Walsh was an original genius. geni-us. He had an unusual gift for rough but very effective oratory. He could command a mob by the plausibility Rnd earnestness of his utterances. In his way he was fully as effective and fascinating a speaker as W. J. Bryan. "Between Rhynders and Mike Walsh there developed, from political and factional fac-tional antagonism, an intense personal animosity. It got to the point where each accused the other to friends of being a braggart and a coward at heart. Then, one day, they met and each charged the other to his face with being a craven. A challenge to a personal per-sonal encounter followed. " 'Rhynders,' said Walsh, 'you think I'm a coward. I know you are, and I'm going to prove It. I'll take you at your word and I'll fight you or make you eat your words. We'll take a room In the Metropolitan hotel. Nobody is to enter that room but you and I. We'll put upon the table in that room a couple of knives. We'll lock the door. You'll take one knife. I'll take the oth- . . er, and we'll fight In the dark until one or both of us is cut to pieces." ."'All right, I'm your man,' said Rhynders. "He thought Walsh was bluffing, for he told me so afterwards. But the room was engaged, the two men went Into it and Walsh locked the door. Then he laid upon the table two large knives, or daggers. It was night, so that the gas was lighted. " 'Make your choice; I'll take the other,' said Walsh. "Rhynders picked up a knife, Walsh took the other, and as he did so he pushed the table Into one corner of the room. Then he told Rhynders to stand at one side of the room, adding that he himself would stand at the other after putting out the light, when the fight would begin. "Rhynders went to his corner, with his knife well seized, while Walsh turned off the gas, and not more than a second later spoke from the other end of the room, so that Rhynders Rhynd-ers might know that there was no foul play 'Come on,' said Walsh, 'we'll fight now and see who's the coward.' "For a moment or two there was perfect quiet. Then: from out that inky inky darkness. Rhynders addressed Walsh. " 'Oh. come now, Mike,' he said, 'this Isn't a fair fight. You don't mean it. Turn on the ga3 and call It quits. I'll shake hands with you.' "Walsh struck a match and lighted the gas. For perhaps a minute he stood looking at Rhynders with perfect per-fect contempt. Then he threw his knife upon the table, unlocked the door, and, standing In the doorway, again faced Rhynders. " 'Rhynders,' he said, 'I have believed all along that you are a coward. Now I've proved it. I would have fought you until one or both of us was dead.' And with that he walked away, and for years after he always spoke of Rhynders with utter contempt, treatment treat-ment that Rhynders never resented." (Copyright. 1910. by E. J. EJwardO |