After some years of widowhood, Mrs. Clay married Captain Henry Watkins of Richmond, Virginia, and, though she bore him seven children, he did not forget to be a father to the children of her former marriage. When Henry was fourteen, Captain Watkins placed him in Richard Denny's store in Richmond. For a year the boy sold groceries and dry-goods in the retail store, reading in every moment of leisure. His step-father thought rightly that a boy who was so eager to read should have better advantages, and therefore applied to his friend, Colonel Tinsley, for a position in the office of the Clerk of the High Court of Chancery, the clerk being the brother of the colonel. "There is no vacancy," said the clerk. "Never mind," said the colonel, "you _must_ take him;" and so he did. The glad mother cut and made for Henry an ill-fitting suit of gray "figinny" (Virginia) cloth, cotton and silk mixed, and starched his linen to a painful stiffness. When he appeared in the clerk's office he was tall and awkward, and the occupants at the desks could scarcely restrain their mirth at the appearance of the new-comer. Henry was put to the task of copying. The clerks wisely remained quiet, and soon found that the boy was proud, ambitious, quick, willing to work, and superior to themselves in common-sense and the use of language. Every night when they went in quest of amusement young Clay went home to read. It could not have been mere chance which attracted to the studious, bright boy the attention of George Wythe, the Chancellor of the High Court of Chancery. He was a noted and noble man, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, for ten years teacher of jurisprudence at William and Mary's College, a man so liberal in his views in the days of slavery that he emancipated all his slaves and made provision for their maintenance; the same great man in whose office Thomas Jefferson gained inspiration in his youth. George Wythe selected Clay for his amanuensis in writing out the decisions of the courts. He soon became greatly attached to the boy of fifteen, directed his reading, first in grammatical studies, and then in legal and historical lines. He read Homer, Plutarch's Lives, and similar great works. The conversation of such a man as Mr. Wythe was to Clay what that of Christopher Gore was to Daniel Webster, or that of Judge Story to Charles Sumner. Generally men who have become great have allied themselves to great men or great principles early in life. When Clay had been four years with the chancellor he naturally decided to become a lawyer. Poverty did not deter him; hard work did not deter him. Those who fear to labor must not take a step on the road to fame.