ck of general goods was purchased, and Patrick and
William, the elder brother, were shoved off upon the uncertain sea of
commerce.

The result was just what might have been expected. The store was a
loafing-place for all the ne'er-do-wells in the vicinity. Patrick
trusted everybody--those who could not get trusted elsewhere patronized
Patrick.

Things grew worse. In a year, when just eighteen years old, P. Henry,
Junior, got married--married a rollicking country lass, as foolish as
himself--done in bravado, going home from a dance, calling a minister
out on his porch, in a crazy-quilt, to perform the ceremony. John Henry
would have applied the birch to this hare-brained bridegroom, and the
father of the girl would have stung her pink-and-white anatomy, but
Patrick coolly explained that the matter could not be undone--they were
duly married for better or for worse, and so the less fuss the better.
Patrick loved his Doxey, and Doxey loved her Patrick, and together they
made as precious a pair of beggars as ever played Gipsy music at a
country fair.

Most of the time they were at the home of the bride's parents--not by
invitation--but they were there. The place was a wayside tavern. The
girl made herself useful in the kitchen, and Patrick welcomed the
traveler and tended bar.

So things drifted, until Patrick was twenty-four, when one fine day he
appeared on the streets of Williamsburg. He had come in on horseback,
and his boots, clothing, hair and complexion formed a chromatic ensemble
the color of Hanover County clay. The account comes from his old-time
comrade, Thomas Jefferson, who was at Williamsburg attending college.

"I've come up here to be admitted to the bar," gravely said P. Henry to
T. Jefferson.

"But you are a barkeeper now, I hear."

"Yes," said Patrick; "but that's the other kind. You see, I've been
studying law, and I want to be admitted to practise."

It took several minutes for the man who was to write the Declaration of
Independence to get it through his head that the matter wasn't a joke.
Then he conducted the lean, lank, rawboned rustic into the presence of
the judges. There were four of these men: Wythe, Pendleton, Peyton and
John Randolph. These men were all to be colleagues of the bumpkin at the
First Continental Congress at Philadelphia, but that lay in the misty
future.

They looked at the candidate in surprise; two of them laughed and two
looked needlessly solemn. However, after som