honor." No duel came out of this. Kremer was a ridiculous person, of whom Daniel Webster, writing to his brother Ezekiel, in New Hampshire, said: "Mr. Kremer is a man with whom one would think of having a shot about as soon as with your neighbor, Mr. Simeon Atkinson, whom he somewhat resembles." And Clay, eventually having been very much ashamed of threatening to challenge poor Kremer, subsequently expressed his regret therefor in these words: "I owe it to the community to say that whatever I may have done, or by inevitable circumstances might be forced to do, no man in it holds in deeper abhorrence than I do that pernicious practice (of duelling). Condemned as it must be by the judgment and the philosophy, to say nothing of the religion, of every thinking man, it is an affair of feeling about which we cannot, although we should, reason." Nevertheless Clay actually did later than this meet on the field of battle John Randolph, of Roanoke. During the celebrated debate on the Panama Congress, in Adams's administration, Randolph, with his usual boldness of vituperation, characterized the administration, which included Adams and Clay, as the "coalition of Blifil and Black George-the combination unheard of until now of the Puritan with the blackleg." That Clay should fairly boil over with wrath when he heard this is not to be wondered at. He challenged Randolph, and the two men met, exchanged shots, and both missed. Randolph, it is said, was dressed in a loose flowing coat, and no

one could say where in its voluminous folds. Randolph's spare and attenuated body was disposed. A bullet touched the coat. At the second fire Clay's bullet inflicted a wound in the garment, whereupon Randolph fired his pistol into the air and said, "I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay," and then they shook hands and were again friends. It should be remembered that all these things happened in the early part of the present century when "the code" ruled throughout the Southern and Western States and a hostile encounter on the " field of honor" was a much less notable or even ridiculous affair than it would be in these later and more peaceful days.

As I have just intimated, when the storms of slander whirled upon the head of this gallant "Harry of the West," the charge of gaming was one of the most effective weapons in the hands of those who endeavored to beat down the popularity of the gallant Kentuckian in the Northern States. I remember to have seen, when a lad, a coarse wood-cut with which the New England States were flooded during the campaign of 1844, when Clay and Frelinghuysen were national candidates against Polk and Dallas. Clay's alleged vices were held up to public execration in sharp contrast with the virtues of Mr. Frelinghuysen, who was an upright Christian gentleman. The cartoon represented Mr. Clay seated at a gambling-table surrounded by the implements of the trade, with bottles, decanters, and pistols in thick array about him. On the other side of a narrow partition was a picture

of Mr. Frelinghuysen in gown and bands preaching to the heathen. There were indeed no limits to the vulgarity, brutality, and libellousness of the charges that were heaped upon Mr. Clay's

name.

As of duelling, so of card-playing, it was then common throughout the country, and gaming for high stakes was not regarded with disfavor, especially in the Southern and Southwestern States. Clay was addicted to pleasure and social amusements. After he had passed the severe apprenticeship of his studious boyhood, he seems to have emancipated himself and thrown himself into the enjoyments of life with a certain fierce fervor which follows a reaction from a hard and barren life. William Plumer, of New Hampshire, who was a member of the Senate when Clay first took his seat in that body in 1806, thus set down in his diary a very fair estimate of the young Kentuckian's character: "Henry Clay is a man of pleasure, fond of amusements; he is a great favorite with the ladies; he is in all parties of pleasure, out almost every evening; reads but little-indeed, he said he meant this session should be a tour of pleasure. He is a man of talents, is eloquent, but not nice or accurate in his distinctions. He declaims more than he reasons. He is a gentlemanly and pleasant companion, a man of honor and integrity." As this tribute comes from a political opponent, we may be sure that it does not err on the side of liberality.

In the diary of John Quincy Adams, written

when he, Clay, Albert Gallatin, and others were Commissioners of the United States at Ghent, occur these words: "I dined again at the table d'hôte at one. The other gentlemen dined together at four. They sit after dinner and drink. bad wine and smoke cigars, which neither suits my habits nor my health, and absorbs time. which I can ill spare. I find it impossible, even with the most rigid economy of time, to do half the writing that I ought." Adams was ten years older than Clay and was brought up in the ascetic and thin atmosphere of Boston; and, with similarly implied censure on another day, he makes this entry: "Just before rising I heard Mr. Clay's company retiring from his chamber. I had left him with Mr. Russell, Mr. Bentzon, and Mr. Todd at cards. They parted as I was about to rise." On this, one of Henry Clay's biographers, Mr. Schurz, quietly remarks: "John Quincy Adams played cards too, but it was that solemn whist which he sometimes went through with the conscientious sense of performing a diplomatic duty." In another chapter of Mr. Adams's diary, Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, is introduced as telling the story that Clay neglected to oppose a certain bill because "the last fortnight of the session Clay spent almost every night at the card-table, and one night Poindexter had won from him eight thousand dollars. This discomposed him to such a degree that he paid no attention to the business of the House the remainder of the session. Before it closed, however, he had won back from

Poindexter all that he had lost except about nine hundred dollars." One who knew Clay very well, Nathan Sargent, long time Commissioner of Customs, Washington, says: "When a candidate for the Presidency Mr. Clay was denounced as a gambler. He was no more a gambler than was almost every Southern and Southwestern gentleman of that day. Play was a passion with them; it was a social enjoyment; they loved its excitement and they played whenever and wherever they met, not for the purpose of winning money from one another, which is the gambler's motive, but for the pleasure it gave them." I quote from Mr. Colton, who, in speaking on this point says: "Mr. Clay never visited a gambling-house in his life, and was never seen at a gaming-table set up for that purpose. In the early periods of his public career he played with his equals in society for the excitements of the game, but he never allowed a pack of cards to be in his own house, and no man ever saw one there. That he was once in the habit of yielding to the seductive passion is not more true than that he always condemned the practice and for the most part abstained from it." If I have given much space to this often-repeated charge that Henry Clay was a gambler, it may be pleaded that to one who remembers the storm of obloquy which was hurled over Clay, and all who supported him, something should be permitted by way of explanation of the cause of that now historic commotion.