A man on the stage must overdo his part, in order not to seem to underdo it.  There was a time when almost every visitor to the city of Washington desired, above all things, to be presented to three men there, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, whom to have seen was a distinction.  When the country member brought forward his agitated constituent on the floor of the Senate-chamber, and introduced him to Daniel Webster, the Expounder was likely enough to thrust a hand at him without so much as turning his head or discontinuing his occupation, and the stranger shrunk away painfully conscious of his insignificance.  Calhoun, on the contrary, besides receiving him with civility, would converse with him, if opportunity favored, and treat him to a disquisition on the nature of government and the “beauty” of nullification, striving to make a lasting impression on his intellect.  Clay would rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and instantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy.  He would call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay.  And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, in his distant village, a copy of the Kentuckian’s last speech, bearing on the cover the frank of “H.  Clay”!  It was almost enough to make a man think of “running for Congress”!  And, what was still more intoxicating, Mr. Clay, who had a surprising memory, would be likely, on meeting this individual two years after the introduction, to address him by name.

There was a gamy flavor, in those days, about Southern men, which was very pleasing to the people of the North.  Reason teaches us that the barn-yard fowl is a more meritorious bird than the game-cock; but the imagination does not assent to the proposition.  Clay was at once game-cock and domestic fowl.  His gestures called to mind the magnificently branching trees of his Kentucky forests, and his handwriting had the neatness and delicacy of a female copyist.  There was a careless, graceful ease in his movements and attitudes, like those of an Indian, chief; but he was an exact man of business, who docketed his letters, and could send from Washington to Ashland for a document, telling in what pigeon-hole it could be found.  Naturally impetuous, he acquired early in life an habitual moderation of statement, an habitual consideration for other men’s self-love, which made him the pacificator of his time.  The great compromiser was himself a compromise.  The ideal of education is to tame men without lessening their vivacity,—­to unite in them the freedom, the dignity, the prowess of a Tecumseh, with the serviceable qualities of the civilized man.  This happy union is said to be sometimes produced in the pupils of the great public schools of England, who are savages on the play-ground and gentlemen in the school-room.  In no man of our knowledge has there been combined so much of the best of the forest chief with so much of the good of the trained man of business as in Henry Clay.  This was one secret of his power over classes of men so diverse as the hunters of Kentucky and the manufacturers of New England.