OCR Text |
Show HENRY CLAY'S WAY OF SPEAKING. By James Parton. You will never know how Henry Clay looked. The common portraits of him show you a form, a mouth, a nose, a chin, and other features, such as he actually had; but they are no more like Henry Clay than the shadow of a magnificent tree is like the tree. You should have seen the man, the living, glowing, speaking man, with color in his cheeks, with blazing fire in his eyes, with grace in every limb and movement, enthralling all ears by the rich music of his deep, melodious voice! The recollection would spoil all his portraits for you. He stood six feet one inch in his slippers, but seemed taller, from his Virginian slenderness of form. There was not a waste ounce about him, the whole of his long, strong, symmetrical body being good flesh, muscle and bone. Tall men are not usually graceful, but Henry Clay was one of the most graceful men of his time. He was as graceful as an Indian, and graceful for the same reason as an Indian, for he spent his growing time in growing. The first sight we get of him, is when he was a small boy in Virginia, seated upon the top of a bag of wheat slung across the back of a pony going to mill. He went to a log schoolhouse a few weeks each winter, but during most of the year the poor widow's son worked out-of-doors, and was much on horseback. When this poor and unfriended orphan was old enough to know something of public affairs, the most admired and famous men in the world were orators. Patrick Henry, then the most honored person in Virginia, next to Washington, owed all his eminence to oratory. John Adams, vice-President, and soon to be President, was an orator. Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan, the greatest English names of the day, were orators. Lord Chatham, the most eminent Englishman of the last generation, was an orator; and Mirabeau, the first leader of the French Revolution, was also an orator. The fame of these men filled the world, and consequently, the ambitious youths of the time supposed that the way to become distinguished and powerful was to learn how to be eloquent. It was the age of the debating society, and of course there was one at Richmond, when Henry Clay was a very young clerk there, first in an apothecary's shop, and next in a lawyer's office. He too, feeling the stirrings of ambition within him, fixed all his hopes upon acquiring power as a public speaker. For some years of his early life, even before he joined the debating society, he was in the habit of reading a portion of history or some book upon science, and then of going out into a cornfield or into a barn, and delivering the substance of what he had read as a speech. He was far more anxious to learn how to say things than to get something wise and true to say. Many a fine speech he delivered to an audience of oxen, horses and pigs. It is, said he once, when addressing a class of law-students, to this early practice of the art of all arts, that I am indebted for the impulses that molded my entire destiny. No doubt this was excellent practice, and it has lately become a favorite exercise in some of our students. When, at length, he entered the debating society, he took a leading part, and many of his companions predicted his future eminence. At the same time, he was so fortunate as to work constantly under the eye and influence of Chancellor Wythe, one of the kindest and best of Virginians; a man who, for conscience's sake, and that alone, set free all slaves at a time when few people thought that slavery was wrong. Working for four years in the office of this good and learned man, he acquired a great deal of that fairness and courtesy to opponents which were very remarkable in the speeches of a man so warm, so passionate, and so positive as he. Considering all things, we cannot look upon his education as unfortunate, although he himself lamented its incompleteness. Once, when in the House of Representatives, he had confessed his want of exact knowledge, John Randolph, a rich planter by inheritance, made a point in his reply, by saying that, however he might differ from Mr. Clay on the main question, he fully agreed with him in his estimate of his own acquisitions. But Mr. Clay was always happy in repartee. I know my deficiencies, said he. I was born to no proud patrimonial estate. I inherited from my father only infancy, ignorance and indigence. I feel my defects. But so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may, without presumption, say it was more my misfortune than my fault. But however I regret my want of ability to furnish the gentlemen with a better specimen of verbal criticism, I will venture to say it is not greater than the disappointment of this committee as to the strength of his argument. Gifted as this young lawyer was, there was no chance for him in old Virginia. We find him, therefore, at the age of twenty, setting his face towards Kentucky. He was so poor when he arrived there that he scarcely knew how to pay his first month's board, and he thought he should be perfectly happy, as he once said, if he could only earn by his profession a hundred pounds a year. But he rushed almost immediately into a large practice, soon married, earned a good estate, and was then in a condition to serve his country in public life. Not that he waited for that, however. I have seen men who remembered hearing Henry Clay speak from a cart in the streets of Lexington, denouncing the alien and sedition laws passed when John Adams was President. But his first fame in Kentucky was due to his success in saving from the gallows the murderers whom he defended. Few men have ever had so much success before a jury as he. He had a strange power of throwing himself into a cause with all his heart and soul, and speaking with an impressive earnestness, as if it were his own life or fortune which he was endeavoring to save. He had this power of entire absorption, even in the discussion of public questions. Youth's Companion. |