“You think my portraits will be red and black and flame-color.” The General spoke cunningly. I saw how he had gone sentry over his feeling, and now I looked for a mild story of those whom I had named. “Webster, mentally, is strong,” said he, “and willing, like a horse. But, like a horse, he can not harness himself to a load. There should be those about to hook the traces and in a measure guide him for his haulings. Compared with Hayne, whose mentality is slim and graceful as is an elm, Webster is the oak. He is bigger and stronger without being so beautiful. Besides, Hayne is indolent, and would sooner drift all day than pull an oar an hour. That is the reason why Calhoun, who has currents, sweeps Hayne along for Nullification. Calhoun is simply a good man gone wrong; and, for that he was bred narrowly and as an aristocrat, he loses time over his dignity. Also, he does not keep in touch with the detail of his destinies, but leaves too much to underlings. Thus he is put into the position of him who attacks a woman--an act without defence, and one most perilous; and, being in, Calhoun lacks that force needed for his extrication. Randolph is built like a spear, with his anger the head and his intelligence to be the shaft of it. He has no morality of thought, and his one virtue is his contempt for Clay. Randolph was born to be beaten, since he was born to make a science of hatred and become a specialist of reprisal. Clay is altogether another story. The man is mean beyond expression. He would be perilous, but he wants in courage. He has appetites but no principles; he can attain to a conclusion but not to a conviction. He owns no depth of mind; he is brilliant in a sheeny, shimmery way, and, being of no integrity, is no more to be laid hold on, mind you! and held to anything, than so much water.” “And would you say,” cried I, “that Clay has no convictions?” “No more than has a mirror! Sir, the man will acquiesce, and show you whatever is set before him like a looking-glass. There is his conviction for you! It is each time some other man's conviction and wholly outside of Clay. Remove it from before him; look then into your burnished statesman, and where is his conviction? Why, sir, when Clay sold himself to Adams, did it not prove what I say?” The General reeled off these views with, for him, a mighty conservatism that was a surprise to me; for knowing his headlong, not to say trenchant, sort, I looked to have him go about his carvings of the portraits of ones inimical to him with a knife. He would have obliged me, too; but he observed my thought, and turned cautious to disappoint me. I must concede, he weighed up these gentry fairly well--he squarely hit them off or I'm the more mistaken. He was too lenient with Calhoun; Calhoun might have called off those slanders against Peg which found voice for his advancement; when he failed of that he became their sponsor.