The first words that fell from his lips were, ‘Gentlemen of the jury.’ His embarrassment now was extreme; blushing, hesitating, and stammering, he repeated the words, ‘Gentlemen of the jury.’ The audience evinced genuine politeness and good breeding, by seeming not to notice his peculiarly unpleasant and trying condition. Suddenly regaining his self-possession, he made a speech of such force and eloquence, as to carry conviction and astonishment at once to the hearts of his hearers. Subsequently he took a prominent part in the debates of the society, and became one of its most efficient members. Shortly after, he was admitted to the Court of Quarter Sessions of Fayette county, a court of general jurisdiction. Perhaps at no previous period was the Lexington bar more highly distinguished for the talents and learning of its members than at that time. ♦Among them were George Nicholas, John Breckenridge, William Murray, and others, whose long established reputation and professional skill seemed to set competition at defiance. They found in Mr. Clay, however, a most formidable competitor: one who, though bland, courteous, and affable, in the ordinary intercourse of life, yet on the field of civic strife was as unyielding and invulnerable as the ‘gnarled oak.’ His talents secured respect, and soon placed him on a level with the highest. He possessed the unbounded confidence of the community where he resided, and the ease with which he secured this was truly surprising. So perfectly insinuating and winning were his ways, and so captivating his appearance, that it was usually yielded at the first interview. Such attributes of mind and person could not and did not fail to surround him with influential and devoted friends, and secure for him a more than respectable patronage. A few short months previous he stood alone, a stranger, unaided, unfriended and destitute, amid the wilds of the then far-off west. Now, the obstacles which then seemed gigantic, had dwindled into insignificance. The rough and forbidding aspect of the road which he had marked out for himself to pursue, had entirely disappeared, and friends and favors poured in upon him from all quarters, and he found himself borne along by the breeze of popular approbation, unconscious that it had yet been awakened.