s march through
the State was over the heads of the people, hundreds following him from
county to county in his ovation. McNutt alone attempted to meet him and
speak with him, and he only once. McNutt was a Virginian, and was a man
of stupendous abilities; he was a lawyer by profession, and was
Governor of the State. Next to Poindexter, he was the ablest man who
ever filled the chair. Unfortunately, like most of the young and
talented of that day in the West, he was too much addicted to the
intoxicating bowl. Upon the only meeting of these, Prentiss and McNutt,
the latter, in his speech, urged as a reason for the rejection or
defeat of the former his dissipated habits, admitted his great
abilities, his masterly genius, pronounced him the first man of the age
intellectually, but deplored his habits, which were rendering him
useless, with all his genius, learning, and eloquence.

Prentiss, in reply, said: "My fellow-citizens, you have heard the
charge against my morals, sagely, and, I had almost said, soberly made
by the gentleman, the Democratic nominee for the chief executive office
of this State: had I said this, it would have been what the lawyers
term a misnomer. It would be impossible for him to do or say anything
soberly, for he has been drunk ten years; not yesterday, or last week,
in a frolic, or, socially, with the good fellows, his friends, at the
genial and generous board--but at home, and by himself and demijohn;
not upon the rich wines of the Rhine or the Rhone, the Saone or the
Guadalquivir; not with high-spirited or high-witted men, whose souls,
when mellowed with glorious wine, leap from their lips sublimated in
words swollen with wit, or thought brilliant and dazzling as the blood
of the grape inspiring them--no; but by himself: selfish and apart from
witty men, or ennobling spirits, in the secret seclusion of a dirty
little back-room, and on corn-whiskey!--these only, communing in
affectionate brotherhood, the son of Virginia and the spirits of old
Kentucky! Why, fellow--citizens, as the Governor of the State, he
refused to sign the gallon-law until he had tested, by experiment, that
a gallon would do him all day!

"Now I will admit, fellow-citizens, that sometimes, when in the
enjoyment of social communion with gentlemen, I am made merry with
these, and the rich wines of glorious France. It is then I enjoy the
romance of life. Imagination, stimulated with the juice of the grape,
gave to the world the