Such, I think it may fairly be said, was Patrick Henry when, at the age of twenty-four, having failed in every other pursuit, he turned for bread to the profession of the law. There is no evidence that either he or any other mortal man was aware of the extraordinary gifts that lay within him for success in that career. Not a scholar surely, not even a considerable miscellaneous reader, he yet had the basis of a good education; he had the habit of reading over and over again a few of the best books; he had a good memory; he had an intellect strong to grasp the great commanding features of any subject; he had a fondness for the study of human nature, and singular proficiency in that branch of science; he had quick and warm sympathies, particularly with persons in trouble,--an invincible propensity to take sides with the under-dog in any fight. Through a long experience in offhand talk with the men whom he had thus far chiefly known in his little provincial world,--with an occasional clergyman, pedagogue, or legislator, small planters and small traders, sportsmen, loafers, slaves and the drivers of slaves, and, more than all, those bucolic Solons of old Virginia, the good-humored, illiterate, thriftless Caucasian consumers of tobacco and whiskey, who, cordially consenting that all the hard work of the world should be done by the children of Ham, were thus left free to commune together in endless debate on the tavern porch or on the shady side of the country store,--young Patrick had learned somewhat of the lawyer's art of putting things; he could make men laugh, could make them serious, could set fire to their enthusiasms. What more he might do with such gifts nobody seems to have guessed; very likely few gave it any thought at all. In that rugged but munificent profession at whose outward gates he then proceeded to knock, it was altogether improbable that he would burden himself with much more of its erudition than was really necessary for a successful general practice in Virginia in his time, or that he would permanently content himself with less. FOOTNOTES: [5] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585. [6] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 20. [7] MS. [8] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 396. [9] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585. [10] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585. [11] MS. [12] MS. [13] MS. [14] MS. [15] Henry Adams, _Life of Gallatin_, 59, 60. [16] Wirt, 9. [17] Wirt, 13. This is the passage on which Jefferson, in his extreme old age, made the characteristically inaccurate comment: "His biographer says, 'He read Plutarch every year.' I doubt if he ever read a volume of it in his life." Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585. CHAPTER III BECOMES A LAWYER