erved his State well, and on the fifth nomination
he had declined. When Washington wished to make him his Secretary of
State, he smiled and shook his head, and to the entreaty that he be
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he said that there were others who
could fill the place better, but he knew of no one who could manage his
farm.

And so he again became the country lawyer, looked after his plantation,
attended to the education of his children, told stories to the neighbors
who came and sat on the veranda--now and again went to rustic parties,
played the violin, and the voice that had cried, "Give me liberty or
give me death," called off for the merry dancers as in the days of old.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-nine, at the personal request of Washington,
who needed, or thought he needed, a strong advocate at the Capitol,
Patrick Henry ran for the Legislature. He was elected, but before the
day arrived when he was to take his seat, he sickened and died,
surrounded by his stricken family. Those who knew him, loved him--those
who did not love him, did not know him.

And a Nation mourned his taking off.

STARR KING

The chief difference between a wise man and an ignorant one is, not
that the first is acquainted with regions invisible to the second,
away from common sight and interest, but that he understands the
common things which the second only sees.

--_Sight and Insight_

[Illustration: STARR KING]

If you had chanced to live in Boston in the early Nineties, alert for
all good things in a mental and spiritual way, you would have made the
Sundays sacred to Minot Savage, Phillips Brooks and Edward Everett Hale.

Emerson says that if you know a clergyman's sect and behold his livery,
in spite of all his show of approaching the subject without prejudice,
you know beforehand exactly to what conclusions he will come. This is
what robs most sermons of their interest. Preaching, like humor, must
have in it the element of surprise. I remember with what a thrill of
delight I would sit and watch Minot Savage unwind his logic and then
gently weave it into a fabric. The man was not afraid to follow a reason
to its lair. He had a way of saying the thing for the first time--it
came as a personal message, contradicting, possibly, all that had been
said before on the subject, oblivious of precedent.

I once saw a man with a line around his wais