Chapter VI: Part 6

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The city of Lexington contains about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. In Lexington two distinct forms of civilization meet.

One is the civilization of the F.F.V., converted into that peculiar form of noblesse known the round world over as the Blue-Grass Aristocracy. Blue-Grass Society represents leisure and luxury and the generous hospitality of friendships generations old; it means broad acres, noble mansions reached by roadways that stray under wide-spreading oaks and elms where squirrels chatter and mild-eyed cows look at you curiously; it means apple-orchards, gardens lined with boxwood, capacious stables and long lines of whitewashed cottages, around which swarm a dark cloud of dependents who dance and sing and laugh--and work when they have to.

Over against these there are to be seen trolley-cars, electric lights, smart rows of new brick houses on lots thirty by one hundred, negro policemen in uniforms patterned after those worn by the Broadway Squad, streets torn up by sewers and conduits, steam-rollers with an unsavory smell of tar and asphalt, push-buttons and a Hello-Exchange.

As to which form of civilization is the more desirable is a question that is usually answered by taste and temperament. One thing sure, and that is, that a pride which swings to t'other side and becomes vanity is often an element in both. Each could learn something of the other. Lots that you can jump across, rented to families of ten, with land a mile away that can be bought for fifty dollars an acre, are not an ideal condition.

On the other hand, inside the city limits of Lexington are mansions surrounded by an even hundred acres. But at some of these, gates are off their hinges, pickets have been borrowed for kindling, creeping vines and long grass o'ertop the walls of empty stables, and a forest of weeds insolently invades the spot where once nestled milady's flower-garden.

Slowly but surely the Blue-Grass Aristocracy is giving way to purslane or asphalt, moving into flats, and allowing the boomer to plat its fair acres--running excursion-trains to attend auction-sales where all the lots are corner lots and are to be bought on the installment plan, which plan is said by a cynic to give the bicycle face.

Just across from Ashland is a beautiful estate, recently sold at a sacrifice to a man from Massachusetts, by the name of Douglas, who I am told is bald through lack of hair and makes three-dollar shoes. The stately old mansion mourns its former masters--all are gone--and a thrifty German is plowing up the lawn, that the cows of the Douglas (tender and true) may eat early clover.

But Ashland is there today in all the beauty and loveliness that Henry Clay knew when he wrote to Benton: "I love old Ashland, and all these acres with their trees and flowers and growing grain lure me in a way that ambition never can. No, I remain at Ashland."

The rambling old house is embowered in climbing vines and clambering rosebushes and is set thick about with cedars, so that you can scarcely see the chimney-tops above the mass of green. A lane running through locust-trees planted by Henry Clay's own hands leads you to the hospitable, wide-open door, where a colored man, whose black face is set in a frame of wool, smiles a welcome. He relieves you of your baggage and leads the way to your room.

The summer breeze blows lazily in through the open window, and the only sound of life and activity about seems to center in two noisy robins which are making a nest in the eaves, right within reach of your hand. The colored man apologizes for them, anathematizes them mildly, and proposes to drive them away, but you restrain him. After the man has gone you bethink you that the suggestion of driving the birds away was only the white lie of society (for even black folks tell white lies), and the old man probably had no more intent of driving the birds away than of going himself.

On the dresser is a pitcher of freshly clipped roses, the morning dew still upon them, and you only cease to admire as you espy your mail that lies there awaiting your hand. News from home and loved ones greets you before these new-found friends do! You have not seen the good folks who live here, only the old colored man who pretended that he was going to kill cock-robin, and didn't. The hospitality is not gushing or effusive--the place is yours, that's all, and you lean out of the window and look down at the flowerbeds, and wonder at the silence and the quiet and peace, and feel sorry for the folks who live in Cincinnati and Chicago. The soughing of the wind through the pines comes to you like the murmur of the sea, and breaking in on the stillness you hear the sharp sound of an ax--some Gladstone chopping, miles and miles away.

Your dreams are broken by a gentle tap at the door and your host has come to call on you. You know him at once, even though you have never before met, for men who think alike and feel alike do not have to "get acquainted." Heart speaks to heart.

He only wishes to say that your coming is a pleasure to all the family at Ashland, the library is yours as well as the whole place, lunch is at one o'clock, and George will get you anything you wish. And back in the shadow of the hallway you catch sight of the old colored man and see him bow low when his name is mentioned.

Ashland is probably in better condition today than when Henry Clay worked and planned, and superintended its fair acres. The place has seen vicissitudes since the body of the man who gave it immortality lay in state here in July, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. But Major McDowell's wife is the granddaughter of Henry Clay, and it seems meet that the descendants of the great man should possess Ashland. Major McDowell has means and taste and the fine pride that would preserve all the traditions of the former master. The six hundred acres are in a high state of cultivation, and the cattle and horses are of the kinds that would have gladdened the heart of Clay.

In the library, halls and dining-room are various portraits of the great man, and at the turn of the stairs is a fine heroic bust, in bronze, of that lean face and form. Hundreds of his books are to be seen on the shelves, all marked and dog-eared and scribbled on, thus disproving much of that old cry that "Clay was not a student." Some men are students only in youth, but Clay's best reading was done when he was past fifty. The book habit grew upon him with the years.

Here are his pistols, spurs, saddle and memorandum-books. Here are letters, faded and yellow, dusted with black powder on ink that has been dry a hundred years, asking for office, or words of gracious thanks in token of benefits not forgot.

Off to the south stretches away a great forest of walnut, oak and chestnut trees--reminders of the vast forest that Daniel Boone knew. Many of these trees were here then, and here let them remain, said Henry Clay. And so today at Ashland, as at Hawarden, no tree is felled until it has been duly tried by the entire family and all has been said for and against the sentence of death. I heard Miss McDowell make an eloquent plea for an old oak that had been rather recklessly harboring mistletoe and many squirrels, until it was thought probable that, like our first parents, it might have a fall. It was a plea more eloquent than "O Woodman, spare that tree." A reprieve for a year was granted; and I thought, as I cast my vote on the side of mercy, that the jury that could not be won by such a young woman as that was hopelessly dead at the top and more hollow at the heart than the old oak under whose boughs we sat.

* * * * *

Ashland is just a mile south of the courthouse. When Henry Clay used to ride horseback between the town and his farm there were scarce a dozen houses to pass on the way, but now the street is all built up, and is smartly paved, and the trolley-line booms a noisy car to the sacred gates every ten minutes.

Lexington was laid out in the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, and the intention was to name it in honor of Colonel Patterson, the founder, or of Daniel Boone. But while the surveyors were doing their work, word came of the battle of some British and certain embattled farmers, and the spirit of freedom promptly declared that the town should be called Lexington.

Three years after the laying-out of Lexington, Henry Clay was born. He was the son of a poor and obscure Baptist preacher who lived at "The Slashes," in Virginia. The boy never had any vivid recollection of his father, who passed away when Henry was a mere child.

The mother had a hard time of it with her family of seven children, and if kind neighbors had not aided, there would have been actual want. And surely one can not blame the widow for "marrying for a home" when opportunity offered. Only one out of that first family ever achieved eminence, and the second brood is actually lost to us in oblivion.

Henry Clay was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks; he also took several post-graduate courses at the same institution. Very early in life we see that he possessed the fine, eager, receptive spirit that absorbs knowledge through the finger-tips; and the ability to think and to absorb is all that even college can ever do for a man. I doubt whether college would have helped Clay, and it might have dimmed the diamond luster of his mind, and diluted that fine audacity which carried him on his way. In this capacity to comprehend in the mass, Clay's character was essentially feminine. We have Thoreau for authority that the intuition and the sympathy found always in the saviors of the world are purely feminine attributes--the legacy bequeathed from a mother who thirsted for better things.

From a clerk in a country store to a bookkeeper, then a copyist for a lawyer, a writer of letters for the neighborhood, a reader of law, and next a lawyer, were easy and natural steps for this ambitious boy.

Virginia with its older settlements offered small opportunities, and so we find young Clay going West, and landing at Lexington when twenty years old. He requested a license to practise law, but the Bar Association, which consisted of about a dozen members, decided that no more lawyers were needed at Lexington. Clay demanded that he should be examined as to fitness, and the blackberry-bush Blackstones sat upon him, as a coroner would say, with intent to give him so stiff an examination that he would be glad to get work as a farmhand.

A dozen questions had been asked, and an attempt had been made to confuse and browbeat the youth, when the Nestor of the Lexington Bar expectorated at a fly ten feet away, and remarked, "Oh, the devil! there is no need of tryin' to keep a boy like this down--he's as fit as we, or fitter!"

And so he was admitted.

From the very first he was a success; he toned up the mental qualities of the Fayette County Bar, and made the older, easy-going members feel to see whether their laurel wreaths were in place.

When he was thirty years of age he was chosen by the Legislature of Kentucky as United States Senator. When his term expired he chose to go to Congress, probably because it afforded better opportunity for oratory and leadership. As soon as he appeared upon the floor he was chosen Speaker by acclamation. So thoroughly American was he, that one of his very first suggestions was to the effect that every member should clothe himself wholly in fabrics made in the United States. Humphrey Marshall ridiculed the proposition and called Clay a demagogue, for which he got himself straightway challenged. Clay shot a bullet through his English-made broadcloth coat, and then they shook hands.

When his term as Congressman expired, he again went to the Senate, and served two years. Then he went back to the House, and through his influence, and his alone, did we challenge Great Britain, just as he had challenged Marshall.

England accepted the challenge, and we call it the War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve.

Very often, indeed, do we hear the rural statesmen at Fourth of July celebrations exclaim, "We have whipped England twice, and we can do it again!"

We whipped England once, and it is possible we could do it again, but she got the best of us in the War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve. Henry Clay plunged the country into war to redress certain grievances, and as a peace commissioner he backed out of that war without having a single one of those grievances indemnified or redressed.

After the treaty of peace had been declared and "the war was over," that fighting Irishman, Andrew Jackson, Irishlike, gave the British a black eye at New Orleans, just for luck, and this is the only thing in that whole misunderstanding of which we should not as a nation be ashamed.

If England had not had Napoleon on her hands at that particular time, Wellington would probably have made a visit to America, and might have brought along for us a Waterloo. And these things are fully explained in the textbooks on history used in the schools of Great Britain, on whose possessions the sun never sets.

But as Henry Clay had gotten us into war, his diplomacy helped to get us out, and as it was a peace without dishonor, Clay's reputation did not materially suffer. In fact, the terms of peace were so ambiguous that Congress gave out to the world that it was a victory, and the exact facts were quite lost in the smoke of Jackson's muskets that hovered over the cotton bales.

Later, when Clay ran against Jackson for the Presidency he found that a peace-hero has no such place in the hearts of men as a war-hero. Jackson had not a tithe of Clay's ability, and yet Clay's defeat was overwhelming. "Peace hath her victories"--yes, but the average voter does not know it. The only men who have received overwhelming majorities for President have been war-heroes. Obscure men have crept in several times, but popular diplomats--never. The fate of such popular men as Clay, Seward and Blaine is one. And when one considers how strong is this tendency to glorify the hero of action, and ignore the hero of thought, he wonders how it really happened that Paul Revere was not made the second President of the United States instead of John Adams.

Clay was a most eloquent pleader. The grace of his manner, the beauty of his speech, and the intense earnestness of his nature often convinced men against their wills.

There was sometimes, however, a suspicion in the air that his best quotations were inspirations, and that the statistics to which he appealed were evolved from his inner consciousness. But the man had power and personality plus. He was a natural leader, and unlike other statesmen we might name, he always carried his town and district by overwhelming majorities. And it is well to remember that the first breath of popular disfavor directed against Henry Clay was because he proposed the abolition of slavery.

Those who knew him best loved him most, and this was true from the time he began to practise law in Lexington, when scarcely twenty-one years old, to his seventy-fifth year, when his worn-out body was brought home to rest.

On that occasion all business in Lexington, and in most of Kentucky, ceased. Even the farmers quit work, and very many private residences were draped in mourning. Memorial services were held in hundreds of churches, the day was given over to mourning, and everywhere men said, "We shall never look upon his like again."

* * * * *

Before I visited Lexington, my cousin, Little Emily, duly wrote me that on no account, when I was in Kentucky, must I offer any criticisms on the character of Henry Clay; for if I grew reckless and compared him with another to his slightest disadvantage, I should have to fight.

That he was absolutely the greatest statesman America has produced is, to all Kentuckians, a fact so sure that they doubt the honesty or the sanity of any one who hints otherwise. He is their ideal, the perfect man, the model for all youths to imitate, and the standard by which all other statesmen are gauged. Clay to Kentucky scores one hundred. And as he was at the last defeated for the highest office, which they say was his God-given right, there is a flavor of martyrdom in his history that is the needed crown for every hero.

Complete success alienates man from his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen of us all. So the South loves Henry Clay.

He is so well loved that he is apotheosized, and thus the real man to many is lost in the clouds. With his name, song and legend have worked their miracles, and to very many Southern people he is a being separate and apart, like Hector or Achilles.

With my cousin, Little Emily, I am always very frank--and you can be honest and frank with so few in this world of expediency, you know! We are so frank in expression that we usually quarrel very shortly. And so I explained to Emily just what I have written here, as to the real Henry Clay being lost.

She contradicted me flatly and said, "To love a person is not to lose him--you never lose except through indifference or hate!" I started to explain and had gotten as far as, "It is just like this," when the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of General Bellicose, who had come to take us riding behind a spanking pair of geldings, that I was assured were standard bred.

In Lexington you never use the general term "horse." You speak of a mare, a gelding, a horse, a four-year-old, a weanling or a sucker. To refer to a trotter as a thoroughbred is to suffer social ostracism, and to obfuscate a side-wheeler with a single-footer is proof of degeneracy. This applies equally to the ethics of the ballroom or the livery-stable. In Kentucky they read Richard's famous lines thus: "A saddler! a saddler! my kingdom for a saddler!" So when I complimented General Bellicose on his geldings and noted that they went square without boots or weights, and that he used no blinders, it thawed the social ice, and we were as brothers. Then I led the way cautiously to Henry Clay, and the General assured me that in his opinion the Henry Clays were even better than the George Wilkes. To be sure, Wilkes had more in the 'thirty list, but the Clays had brains, and were cheerful; they neither lugged nor hung back, whereas you always had to lay whip to a Wilkes in order to get along a bit, or else use a gag and overcheck.

I pressed Little Emily's hand under the lap-robe and asked her if all Kentuckians were believers in metempsychosis. "Colonel Littlejourneys is making fun of you, General," said Little Emily; "the Colonel is talking about the man, and you are discussing trotters!"

And then I apologized, but the General said it was he who should make the apology, and raising the carriage-seat brought out a box of genuine Henry Clay Havanas, in proof of amity.

It's a very foolish thing to smile at a man who rides a hobby. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life, to the great amusement of his enemies and the mortification of his wife; and when the man was dead they found it was a real live horse and had carried the man many long miles.

General Bellicose loves a horse; so does Little Emily and so do I. But Little Emily and the General know history and have sounded politics in a way that puts me in the kindergarten; and I found before the day was over that what one did not know about the political history of America the other did. And mixed up in it all we discussed the merits of the fox-trot versus the single-foot.

We saw the famous Clay monument, built by the State at a cost of nearly a hundred thousand dollars, and with uncovered heads gazed through the gratings into the crypt where lies the dust of the great man. Then we saw the statue of John C. Breckinridge in the public square, and visited various old ebb-tide mansions where the "quarters" had fallen into decay, and the erstwhile inhabitants had moved to the long row of tenements down by the cotton-mill. My train whistled and we were half a mile from the station, but the General said we would get there in time--and we did. I bade my friends good-by and quite forgot to thank them for all their kindness, although down in my heart I felt that it had been a time rare as a day in June. I believe they felt my gratitude, too, for where there is such a feast of wit and flow of soul, such kindness, such generosity, the spirit understands.

When I arrived home I found a box awaiting me, bearing the express mark of Lexington, Kentucky. On opening the case I found six quart-bottles of "Henry Clay--1881"; and a card with the compliments of Little Emily and General Bellicose. On the outside of the case was neatly stenciled the legend, "Thackeray, Full sett, 14 vol., half Levant." I do not know why the box was so marked, but I suppose it was in honor of my literary proclivities. I went out and blew four merry blasts on a ram's horn, and the Philistines assembled.

JOHN JAY

Calm repose and the sweets of undisturbed retirement appear more
distant than a peace with Britain.

It gives me pleasure, however, to reflect that the period is
approaching when we shall be citizens of a better ordered State,
and the spending of a few troublesome years of our eternity in
doing good to this and future generations is not to be avoided
nor regretted. Things will come right, and these States will yet
be great and flourishing.
--Letter to Washington

America should feel especially charitable towards Louis the Great, called by Carlyle, Louis the Little, for banishing the Huguenots from France. What France lost America gained. Tyranny and intolerance always drive from their homes the best: those who have ability to think, courage to act, and a pride that can not be coerced.

The merits possessed by the Huguenots are exactly those which every man and nation needs. And these are simple virtues, too, whose cultivation stands within the reach of all. These are the virtues of the farmers and peasants and plain people who do the work of the world, and give good government its bone and sinew. To a great degree, so-called society is made up of parasites who fasten and feed upon the industrious and methodical.

If you have read history you know that the men who go quietly about their business have been cajoled, threatened, driven, and often, when they have been guilty of doing a little independent thinking on their own account, banished. And further than this, when you read the story of nations dead and gone you will see that their decline began when the parasites got too numerous and flauntingly asserted their supposed power. That contempt for the farmer, and indifference to the rights of the man with tin pail and overalls, which one often sees in America, are portents that mark disintegrating social bacilli. If the Republic of the United States ever becomes but a memory, like Carthage, Athens and Rome, drifting off into senile decay like Italy and Spain or France, where a man may yet be tried and sentenced without the right of counsel or defense, it will be because we forgot--we forgot!

In moral fiber and general characteristics the Huguenots and the Puritans were one. The Huguenots had, however, the added virtue of a dash of the Frenchman's love of beauty. By their excellent habits and loyalty to truth, as they saw it, they added a vast share to the prosperity and culture of the United States.

Of seven men who acted as presiding officer over the deliberations of Congress during the Revolutionary Period, three were of Huguenot parentage: Laurens, Boudinot and Jay. John Jay was a typical Huguenot, just as Samuel Adams was a typical Puritan. In his life there was no glamour of romance. Stern, studious and inflexibly honest, he made his way straight to the highest positions of trust and honor. Good men who are capable are always needed. The world wants them now more than ever. We have an overplus of clever individuals; but for the faithful men who are loyal to a trust there is a crying demand.

The life of Jay quite disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground--made head upon the whole by grubbing.

His father was a hard-headed, prosperous merchant, who did business in New York, and moved his big family up to the little village of Rye because life in the country was simple and cheap. Thus did Peter Jay prove his commonsense.

Peter Jay copied every letter he wrote, and we now have these copy-books, revealing what sort of man he was. Religious he was, and scrupulously exact in all things. We see that he ordered Bibles from England, "and also six groce of Church Wardens," which I am told is a long clay pipe, "that hath a goodly flavor and doth not bite the tongue." He also at one time ordered a chest of tea, and then countermanded the order, having taken the resolve to "use no tea in my family while that rascally Tax is on--having a spring of good, pure water near my house." Which shows that a man can be very much in earnest and still joke.

John was the baby, scarcely a year old, when the Jay family moved up to Rye. He was the eighth child, and as he grew up he was taught by the older ones. He took part in all the fun and hardships of farm life--going to school in Winter, working in Summer, and on Sundays hearing long sermons at church.

We find by Peter Jay's letter-book that: "Johnny is about our brightest child. We have great hopes of him, and believe it will be wise to educate him for a preacher." In order to educate boys then, they were sent to live in the family of some man of learning. And so we find "Johnny" at twelve years of age installed in the parsonage at New Rochelle, the Huguenot settlement. The pastor was a Huguenot, and as only French was spoken in the household, the boy acquired the language, which afterwards stood him in good stead.

The pastor reported favorably, and when fifteen, young Jay was sent to King's College, which is now Columbia University, kings not being popular in America.

Doctor Samuel Johnson, who nowise resembled Ursa Major, was the president of the College at that time. He was also the faculty, for there were just thirty students and he did all the teaching himself. Doctor Johnson, true to his name, dearly loved a good book, and when teaching mathematics would often forget the topic and recite Ossian by the page, instead. Jay caught it, for the book craze is contagious and not sporadic. We take it by being exposed.

And thus it was while under the tutelage of Doctor Johnson that Jay began to acquire the ability to turn a terse sentence; and this gained him admittance into the world of New York letters, whose special guardians were Dickinson and William Livingston.

Livingston invited the boy to his house, and very soon we find the young man calling without special invitation, for Livingston had a beautiful daughter about John's age, who was fond of Ossian, too, or said she was.

And as this is not a serial love-story, there is no need of keeping the gentle reader in suspense, so I will explain that some years later John married the girl, and the mating was a very happy one.

After John had been to King's College two years we find in the faded and yellow old letter-book an item written by the father to the effect that: "Our Johnny is doing well at College. He seems sedate and intent on gaining knowledge; but rather inclines to Law instead of the Ministry."

Doctor Johnson was succeeded by Doctor Myles Cooper, a Fellow of Oxford, who used to wear his mortarboard cap and scholar's gown up Broadway. In young Jay's veins there was not a drop of British blood. Of his eight great-grandparents, five were French and three Dutch, a fact he once intimated in the Oxonian's presence. And then it was explained to the youth that if such were the truth it would be as well to conceal it.

Alexander Hamilton got along very well with Doctor Cooper, but John Jay found himself rusticated shortly before graduation. Some years after this Doctor Cooper hastily climbed the back fence, leaving a sample of his gown on a picket, while Alexander Hamilton held the Whig mob at bay at the front door.

Cooper sailed very soon for England, anathematizing "the blarsted country" in classic Latin as the ship passed out of the Narrows.

"England is a good place for him," said the laconic John Jay.

So John Jay was to be a lawyer. And the only way to be a lawyer in those days was to work in a lawyer's office. A goodly source of income to all established lawyers was the sums they derived for taking embryo Blackstones into their keeping. The greater a man's reputation as a lawyer, the higher he placed his fee for taking a boy in.

In those days there were no printed blanks, and a simple lease was often a day's work to write out; so it was not difficult to keep the boys busy. Besides that, they took care of the great man's horse, blacked his boots, swept the office, and ran errands. During the third year of apprenticeship, if all went well, the young man was duly admitted to the Bar. A stiff examination kept out the rank outsiders, but the nomination by a reputable attorney was equivalent to admittance, for all members knew that if you opposed an attorney today, tomorrow he might oppose you.

To such an extent was this system of taking students carried that, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, we find New York lawyers alarmed "by the awful influx of young Barristers upon this Province." So steps were taken to make all attorneys agree not to have more than two apprentices in their office at one time. About the same time the Boston newspaper, called the "Centinel," shows there was a similar state of overproduction in Boston. Only the trouble there was principally with the doctors, for doctors were then turned loose in the same way, carrying a diploma from the old physician with whom they had matriculated and duly graduated.

Law schools and medical colleges, be it known, are comparatively modern institutions--not quite so new, however, as business colleges, but pretty nearly so. And now in Chicago there is a "Barbers' University," which issues diplomas to men who can manipulate a razor and shears, whereas, until yesterday, boys learned to be barbers by working in a barber's shop. The good old way was to pass a profession along from man to man.

And it is so yet in a degree, for no man is allowed to practise either medicine or law until he has spent some time in the office of a practitioner in good standing.

In the Catholic Church, and also in the Episcopal, the novitiate is expected to serve for a time under an older clergyman; but all the other denominations have broken away, and now spring the fledgling on the world straight from the factory.

Several other of his children having sorely disappointed him, Peter Jay seemed to center his ambitions on his boy John. So we find him paying Benjamin Kissam, the eminent lawyer, two hundred pounds in good coin of the Colony to take John Jay as a 'prentice for five years. John went at it and began copying those endless, wordy documents in which the old-time attorney used to delight. John sat at one end of a table, and at the other was seated one Lindley Murray, at the mention of whose name terror used to seize my soul.

Murray has written some good, presentable English to the effect that young Jay, even at that time, had the inclination and ability to focus his mind upon the subject in hand. "He used to work just as steadily when his employer was away as when he was in the office," a fact which the grammarian seemed to regard as rather strange.

In a year we find that when Mr. Kissam went away he left the keys of the safe in John Jay's hands, with orders what to do in case of emergencies. Thus does responsibility gravitate to him who can shoulder it, and trust to the man who deserves it.

It was in Kissam's office that Jay acquired that habit of reticence and serene poise which, becoming fixed in character, made his words carry such weight in later years. He never gave snapshot opinions, or talked at random, or voiced any sentiment for which he could not give a reason.

His companions were usually men much older than he. At the "Moot Club" he took part with James Duane, who was to be New York's first continental mayor; Gouverneur Morris, who had not at that time acquired the wooden leg which he once snatched off and brandished with happy effect before a Paris mob; and Samuel Jones, who was to take as 'prentice and drill that strong man, De Witt Clinton.

Before his years of apprenticeship were over, John Jay, the quiet, the modest, the reticent, was known as a safe and competent lawyer--Kissam having pushed him forward as associate counsel in various difficult cases.

Meantime, certain chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, and the example had been followed by the "Mohawks" in New York. British oppression had made many Tories lukewarm, and then English rapacity had transformed these Tories into Whigs. Jay was one of these; and in newspapers and pamphlets, and from the platform, he had pleaded the cause of the Colonies. Opposition crystallized his reasons, and threats only served to make him reaffirm the truths he had stated.

So prominent had his utterances made his name, that one fine day he was nominated to attend the first Congress of the Colonies to be held in Philadelphia.

In August, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, we find him leaving his office in New York in charge of a clerk, and riding horseback over to the town of Elizabeth, there joining his father-in-law, and the two starting for Philadelphia. On the road they fell in with John Adams, who kept a diary. That night at the tavern where they stopped, the sharp-eyed Yankee recorded the fact of meeting these new friends and added, "Mr. Jay is a young gentleman of the law ... and Mr. Scott says a hard student and a very good speaker."

And so they journeyed on across the State to Trenton and down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, visiting, and cautiously discussing great issues as they went. Samuel Adams, too, was in the party, as reticent as Jay. Jay was twenty-nine and Samuel Adams fifty-two years old, but they became good friends, and Samuel once quietly said to John Adams, "That man Jay is young in years, but he has an old head."

Jay was the youngest man of the Convention, save one.

When the Second Congress met, Jay was again a delegate. He served on several important committees, and drew up a statement that was addressed to the people of England; but he was recalled to New York before the supreme issue was reached, and thus, through accident, the Declaration of Independence does not contain the signature of John Jay.

* * * * *

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight, Jay was chosen president of the Continental Congress to succeed that other patriotic Huguenot, Laurens. The following year he was selected as the man to go to Spain, to secure from that country certain friendly favors.

His reception there was exceedingly frosty, and the mention of his two years on the ragged edge of court life at Madrid, in later years brought to his face a grim smile.

Spain's diplomatic policy was smooth hypocrisy and rank untruth, and all her promises, it seems, were made but to be broken. Jay's negotiations were only partially successful, but he came to know the language, the country and the people in a way that made his knowledge very valuable to America.

By Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, England had begun to see that to compel the absolute submission of the Colonies was more of a job than she had anticipated. News of victories was duly sent to the "mother country" at regular intervals, but with these glad tidings were requests for more troops, and requisitions for ships and arms.

The American army was a very hard thing to find. It would fight one day, to retreat the next, and had a way of making midnight attacks and flank movements that, to say the least, were very confusing. Then it would separate, to come together--Lord knows where! This made Lord Cornwallis once write to the Home Secretary: "I could easily defeat the enemy, if I could find him and engage him in a fair fight." He seemed to think it was "no fair," forgetting the old proverb which has something to say about love and war.

Finally, Cornwallis got the thing his soul desired--a fair fight. He was then acting on the defensive. The fight was short and sharp; and Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who led the charge, in ten minutes planted the Stars and Stripes on his ramparts.

That night Cornwallis was the "guest" of Washington, and the next day a dinner was given in his honor.

He was then obliged to write to the Home Secretary, "We have met the enemy, and we are theirs"--but of course he did not express it just exactly that way. Then it was that King George, for the first time, showed a disposition to negotiate for peace.

As peace commissioners, America named Franklin, John Adams, Laurens, Jay and Jefferson.

Jefferson refused to leave his wife, who was in delicate health. Adams was at The Hague, just closing up a very necessary loan. Laurens had been sent to Holland on a diplomatic mission, and his ship having been overhauled by a British man-of-war, he was safely in that historic spot, the Tower of London.

So Jay and Franklin alone met the English commissioners, and Jay stated to them the conditions of peace.

In a few weeks Adams arrived, still keeping a diary. In that diary is found this item: "The French call me 'Le Washington de la Negociation': a very flattering compliment indeed, to which I have no right, but sincerely think it belongs to Mr. Jay."

Jay quitted Paris in May, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, having been gone from his native land eight years. When he reached New York there was a great demonstration in his honor. Triumphal arches were erected across Broadway, houses and stores were decorated with bunting, cannons boomed, and bells rang. The freedom of the city was presented to him in a gold box, with an exceedingly complimentary address, engrossed on parchment, and signed by one hundred of the leading citizens.

Jay spent just one day in New York, and then rode on horseback up to the old farm at Rye, Westchester County, to see his father. That evening there was a service of thanksgiving at the village church, after which the citizens repaired to the Jay mansion, one story high and eighty feet long, where a barrel of cider was tapped, and "a groce of Church Wardens" passed around, with free tobacco for all.

John Jay stood on the front porch and made a modest speech just five minutes long, among other things saying he had come home to be a neighbor to them, having quit public life for good. But he refused to talk about his own experiences in Europe. His reticence, however, was made up for by good old Peter Jay, who assured the people that John Jay was America's foremost citizen; and in this statement he was backed up by the village preacher, with not a dissenting voice from the assembled citizens.

It is rather curious (or it isn't, I'm not sure which) how most statesmen have quit public life several times during their careers, like the prima donnas who make farewell tours. The ingratitude of republics is proverbial, but to limit ingratitude to republics shows a lack of experience. The progeny of the men who tired of hearing Aristides called The Just are very numerous. Of course it is easy to say that he who expects gratitude does not deserve it; but the fact remains that the men who know it are yet stung by calumny when it comes their way.

That fine demonstration in Jay's honor was in great part to overwhelm and stamp out the undertone of growl and snarl that filled the air. Many said that peace had been gained at awful cost, that Jay had deferred to royalty and trifled with the wishes of the people in making terms.

And now Jay had got home, back to his family and farm, back to quiet and rest. The long, hard fight had been won and America was free. For eight years had he toiled and striven and planned: much had been accomplished--not all he hoped, but much.

He had done his best for his country, his own affairs were in bad shape, Congress had paid him meagerly, and now he would turn public life over to others and live his own life.

All through life men reach these places where they say, "Here will we build three tabernacles"; but out of the silence comes the imperative Voice, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

And now the war was over, peace was concluded; but war leaves a country in chaos. The long, slow work of reconstruction and of binding up a nation's wounds must follow. America was independent, but she had yet to win from the civilized world the recognition that she must have in order to endure.

Jay was importuned by Washington to take the position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one of the most important offices to be filled.

He accepted, and discharged the exacting duties of the place for five years.

Then came the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the election of Washington as President of the United States.

Washington wrote to Jay: "There must be a Court, perpetual and Supreme, to which all questions of internal dispute between States or people be referred. This Court must be greater than the Executive, greater than any individual State, separated and apart from any political party. You must be the first official head of the Executive."

And Jay, as every schoolboy knows, was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. By his sagacity, his dignity, his knowledge of men, and love of order and uprightness, he gave it that high place which it yet holds, and which it must hold; for when the decisions of the Supreme Court are questioned by a State or people, the fabric of our government is but a spider's web through which anarchy and unreason will stalk.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, came serious complications with Great Britain, growing out of the construction of terms of peace made in Paris eleven years before.

Some one must go to Great Britain and make a new treaty in order to preserve our honor and save us from another war.

Franklin was dead; Adams as Vice-President could not be spared; Hamilton's fiery temper was dangerous--no one could accomplish the delicate mission so well as Jay.

Jay, self-centered and calm, said little; but in compliance with Washington's wish resigned his office, and set sail with full powers to use his own judgment in everything, and the assurance that any treaty he made would be ratified.

Arriving in England, he at once opened negotiations with Lord Grenville, and in five months the new treaty was signed.

It provided for the payment to American citizens for losses of private shipping during the war; and over ten million dollars were paid to citizens of the United States under this agreement.

It fixed the boundary-line between the State of Maine and Canada; provided for the surrender of British posts in the Far West; that neither nation was to allow enlistments within its territory by a third nation at war with another; arranged for the surrender of fugitives charged with murder or forgery; and made definite terms as to various minor, but none the less important, questions.

A storm of opposition greeted the treaty when its terms were made known in America. Jay was accused of bartering away the rights of America, and indignation meetings were held, because Jay had not insisted on apologies, and set sums of indemnity on this, that and the other.

Nevertheless, Washington ratified the treaty; and when Jay arrived in America there was a greeting fully as cordial and generous as that on the occasion of his other homecoming.

In fact, while he was absent, his friends had put him in nomination as Governor of New York. His election to that office occurred just two days before he arrived, and when he landed his senses were mystified by hearing loud hurrahs for "Governor Jay."

When his term of office expired he was re-elected, so he served as Governor, in all, six years. The most important measure carried out during that time was the abolition of slavery in the State of New York, an act he had strenuously insisted on for twenty years, but which was not made possible until he had the power of Governor, and crowded the measure upon the Legislature.

Over a quarter of a century had passed since John Adams and John Jay had met on horseback out there on the New Jersey turnpike. Their intimacy had been continuous and their labors as important as ever engrossed the minds of men, but in it all there was neither jealousy nor bickering. They were friends.

At the close of Jay's gubernatorial term, President Adams nominated him for the office of Chief Justice, made vacant by the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth. The Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination, but Jay refused to accept the place.

For twenty-eight years he had served his country--served it in its most trying hours. He was not an old man in years, but the severity and anxiety of his labors had told on his health, and the elasticity of youth had gone from his brain forever. He knew this, and feared the danger of continued exertion. "My best work is done," he said; "if I continue I may undo the good I have accomplished. I have earned a rest."

He retired to the ancestral farm at Bedford, Westchester County, to enjoy his vacation. In a year his wife died, and the shock told on his already shattered nerves.

"The habit of reticence grew upon him," says one writer, "until he could not be tricked into giving an opinion even about the weather."

And so he lived out his days as a partial recluse, deep in problems of "raising watermelons, and sheep that would not jump fences." He worked with his hands, wore blue jeans, voted at every town election, but to a great degree lived only in the past. The problems of church and village politics and farm life filled his declining days.

To a great degree his physical health came back, but the problems of statecraft he left to other heads and hands.

His religious nature manifested itself in various philanthropic schemes, and the Bible Society he founded endures even unto this day. These things afforded a healthful exercise for that tireless brain which refused to run down.

His daughters made his home ideal, their love and gentleness soothing his declining years.

Death to him was kindly, gathering him as Autumn, the messenger of Winter, reaps the leaves.

* * * * *

No one has ever made the claim that Jay possessed genius. He had something which is better, though, for most of the affairs of life, and that is commonsense. In his intellect there was not the flash of Hamilton, nor the creative quality possessed by Jefferson, nor the large all-roundness of Franklin.

He was the average man who has trained and educated and made the best use of every faculty and every opportunity. He was genuine; he was honest; and if he never surprised his friends by his brilliancy, he surely never disappointed them through duplicity.

He made no promises that he could not keep; he held out no vain hopes.

As a diplomat he seems nearly the ideal. We have been taught that the line of demarcation between diplomacy and untruth is very shadowy. But truth is very good policy and in the main answers the purpose much better than the other thing. I am quite willing to leave the matter to those who have tried both.

We can not say that Jay was "magnetic," for magnetic men win the rabble; but Jay did better: he won the confidence and admiration of the strong and discerning. His manner was gentle and pleasing; his words few, and as a listener he set a pace that all novitiates in the school of diplomacy would do well to follow.

To talk well is a talent, but to listen is a fine art. If I really wished to win the love of a man I'd practise the art of listening. Even dull people often talk well when there is some one near who cultivates the receptive mood; and to please a man you must give him an opportunity to be both wise and witty. Men are pleased with their friends when they are pleased with themselves, and no man is ever so pleased with himself as when he has expressed himself well.

The sympathetic listener at a lecture or sermon is the only one who gets his money's worth. If you would get good, lend your sympathy to a speaker, and if, accidentally, you imbibe heresy, you can easily throw it overboard when you get home.

John Jay was quiet and undemonstrative in speech, cultivating a fine reserve. In debate he never fired all his guns, and his best battles were won with the powder that was never exploded. "You had always better keep a small balance to your credit," he once advised a young attorney.

When the first Congress met, Jay was not in favor of complete independence from England. He asked only for simple justice, and said, "The middle course is best." He listened to John Adams and Patrick Henry and quietly discussed the matter with Samuel Adams; but it was some time before he saw that the density of King George was hopeless, and that the work of complete separation was being forced upon the Colonies by the blindness and stupidity of the British Parliament.

He then accepted the issue.

During those first days of the Revolution, New York did not stand firm, as did Boston, for the cause of independence. "The foes at home are the only ones I really fear," once wrote Hamilton.

First to pacify and placate, then to win and hold those worse than neutrals, was the work of John Jay. While Washington was in the field, Jay, with tireless pen, upheld the cause, and by his speech and presence kept anarchy at bay.

As president of the Committee of Safety he showed he could do something more than talk and write. When Tories refused to take the oath of allegiance he quietly wrote the order to imprison or banish; and with friend, foe or kinsman there was neither dalliance nor turning aside. His heart was in the cause--his property, his life. The time for argument had passed.

In the gloom that followed the defeat of Washington at Brooklyn, Jay issued an address to the people that is a classic in its fine, stern spirit of hope and strength. Congress had the address reprinted and sent broadcast, and also translated and printed in German.