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"Incedo super ignes I walk over fires," confided the straitlaced Adams to his diary, and not without reason. A group of Clay's friends came to the New Englander's room to urge in somewhat veiled language that their chief be promised, in return for his support, a place in the Cabinet.

The decision in favor of Adams was reached with little delay and was confided to intimates almost two months before the House balloted. Though Clay's choice did not insure the election of Adams, it made that outcome extremely probable. As the weeks passed, the situation became more tense.

Thus it was that Jefferson rendered true his own saying, "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans." Jefferson yielded, also, on the question of free-trade. There is a passage of a few lines in Mr. Jefferson's Message of 1806, the year of Henry Clay's first appearance in Washington, which may be regarded as the text of half the Kentuckian's speeches, and the inspiration of his public life.

The concessions to the domineering South, in Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833, let the Conspirators down easily, so to speak; and they pretended to be satisfied. But they were satisfied only as are the thirsty sands of Africa with the passing shower. The Conspirators had, however, after all, made substantial gains. They had established a precedent for an attempt to secede. That was something.

A clerk appeared, received orders, and disappeared. Johnnie, now on the subject of his hero, continued to harp on his points. "You're damn whistlin' Clay ain't like me. He's the best hawss-buster in Arizona. The bronco never was built that can pile him, nor the man that can lick him. Clay's no bad hombre, you understand, but there can't nobody run it over him. That's whatever.

I ant look for no trouble with no rubes." "I believe you did it on purpose." "Tank so? Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you. I got no time for damn fule talk." The Westerner started on his way. There was no use having a row with a sulky janitor. But the Swede misunderstood his purpose. At Clay's first step forward he jerked round the nozzle and let the range-rider have it with full force.

Clay's law practice at first was chiefly directed to the defence of criminals, and it is said that no murderer whom he defended was ever hanged; but he soon was equally successful in civil cases, gradually acquiring a lucrative practice, without taking a high rank as a jurist.

It was heavy in the extreme, and I confess that I was disappointed and tired long before it was finished. No doubt the speech was full of fact and argument, but it had none of the fire of oratory, or intensity of feeling, that marked all of Mr. Clay's efforts. Toward the end of July, as before stated, all the family went home to Lancaster.

Supported by the people, he would have brought unification a long step forward. Unfortunately, when it came to political strength, Clay's people were confined to the Western section, where his efforts in their behalf had made him an idol. He was a legislative hero, so to speak. But there was a war hero, whose popularity was not measured so much by a section.

To the grievances of the South he devotes more than five pages of his speech, to those of the North less than two. As to the infamy of making the national capital a great slave-mart, he has nothing to say although it was a matter which figured as one of the elements in Mr. Clay's scheme. But what most shocked the North in this connection were his utterances in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law.