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The Cash-Shannon duel still bothers South Carolinians who "hold honor dearer than life." Col. Ellerbe Boggan Crawford Cash's wife held a judgment against her brother's property. A client of Col. William M. Shannon and Capt. William L. DePass held a junior judgment and contested the sale of the property to satisty Mrs Cash's claim. The legal basis of the contest was a charge of fraud between Mrs. Cash and her brother.
It seems unlikely that Mrs. Cash and her brother intended a fraud, or that Col. Shannon believed personally that there was a fraud, and in fact the court did not find a fraud. But Col. Shannon was fellow counsel in a case in which the procedure was a charge of a legal fraud. Col. Cash took this and the evidence adduced as an insult against his wife and he and his brother-in-law each issued a challenge to both lawyers. Neither accepted.
Just before this time Mrs. Cash had died saying, "I can live above such imputations." Then Col. Cash's son published the famed circular "Camden Soliloquies," jingling at Shannon: "My daddy was a gin-maker." Shannon then wrote: scurrilous, vulgar. libelous, false and dirty language." Cash replied : . . . I have with great reluctance come to the settled conclusion that you are the unmitigated scoundrel you have been represented to be."
Shannon's second was next to communicate with Cash and the two men met at 1 p m at Dubois' Bridge, Darlington County, S. C. When Shannon saluted Cash, the latter was looking at his wife's photograph and did not see or return the salute. At the count of one, Shannon fired and Cash felt a hot blow on his cheek—the sand kicked up by Shannon's bullet. At the count of two, Cash fired, saw a white spot against Shannon's black coat precisely where he had aimed, but Shannon stood firm. Cash was beginning to think he had been cheated when Shannon stepped forward, turned, staggered, fell dead. Around these facts tens of thousands of words of hot South Carolinian dispute have whirled ever since.—ED.
New Mexico's Curry
Sirs:
From my old friend, Bud Rogers of Lincoln County, N.M., this letter:
"I have been reading in this hear magazeen time you sint me that my old friend george curry is dead (April 25). I wish you wood write them a letter and fix it up in nice and proper language and tell them he aint dead no more than you or me. It was some other old timer in Hillsboro that died. One of them there newspaper fellers called the sheriff at Hillsboro by long distance and the sheriff could not here good and this hear newspaper feller thought he said George was dead. Anyways he aint. He's alive and well at his home at Hot Springs, New Mex.,"
ARCHER FULLINGIM
Pampa Daily News
Pampa, Texas
Little People
Sirs:
Having today seen Singer's midgets at a Salt Lake City theatre, I made the observation in a letter to a friend of mine that I imagined most midgets must be sexually impotent or sterile, judging from their physical development and the squeakiness of their voices.
Now, not two hours later comes in TIME (April 25) your report of a daughter born to Baron Raucci and Margaret Lane. I admit my error: but I would like enlightenment on the causes of midgetism.