Tate, it seems, challenged Dooly to mortal combat.  Mr. Crawford was Tate’s friend.  Dooly, contrary to all expectation, accepted, and named General Clark as his friend, and appointed a day of meeting.  Tate had lost a leg, and, as was usual in that day, had substituted a wooden, one.  On the appointed day, Tate, with his friend, repaired to the place of meeting, where Dooly had preceded them, and was alone, sitting upon a stump.  Crawford approached him, and asked for his friend, General Clark.

“He is in the woods, sir.”

“And will soon be present, I presume?” asked Crawford.

“Yes; as soon as he can find a gum.”

“May I inquire, Colonel Dooly, what use you have for a gum in the matter we have met to settle?”

“I want it to put my leg in, sir.  Do you suppose I can afford to risk my leg of flesh and bone against Tate’s wooden one?  If I hit his leg, why, he will have another to-morrow, and be pegging about as well as usual.  If he hits mine, I may lose my life by it; but almost certainly my leg, and be compelled, like Tate, to stump it the balance of my life.  I cannot risk this; and must have a gum to put my leg in:  then I am as much wood as he is, and on equal terms with him.”

“I understand you, Colonel Dooly; you do not intend to fight.”

“Well, really, Mr. Crawford, I thought everybody knew that.”

“Very well, sir,” said Crawford; “but remember, colonel, your name, in no enviable light, shall fill a column of a newspaper.”

“Mr. Crawford, I assure you,” replied Colonel Dooly, “I would rather fill every newspaper in Georgia than one coffin.”

It is scarcely necessary to say, that Tate and Crawford left the field discomfited, and here the matter ended.

Dooly never pretended to belligerency.  When Judge Gresham threatened to chastise him, he coolly replied he could do it; but that it would be no credit to him, for anybody could do it.  And when he introduced his friend to another as the inferior judge of the Inferior Court of the inferior County of Lincoln, and was knocked down for the insult, he intreated the bystanders not to suffer him to be injured.  When released from the grasp of his antagonist, he rubbed his head, and facetiously said:  “This is the forty-second fight I have had, and if I ever got the best of one, I do not now recollect it.”

Judge Dooly was much beloved by the younger members of the Bar, to whom he was ever kind and indulgent, associating with them upon his circuit, and joining in all their amusements.  His wit spared no one, and yet no one was offended at it.  His humor was the life of the company wherever he was, and he was never so burdened with official dignity as to restrain it on the bench.  Unbiassed by party considerations or personal prejudices, and only influenced by a sense of duty and wish to do right, it was impossible he could be otherwise than popular.  This popularity,