There
was a careless, graceful ease in his movements and attitudes, like
those of an Indian, chief; but he was an exact man of business, who
docketed his letters, and could send from Washington to Ashland for a
document, telling in what pigeon-hole it could be found. Naturally
impetuous, he acquired early in life an habitual moderation of
statement, an habitual consideration for other men's self-love, which
made him the pacificator of his time. The great compromiser was
himself a compromise. The ideal of education is to tame men without
lessening their vivacity,--to unite in them the freedom, the dignity,
the prowess of a Tecumseh, with the serviceable qualities of the
civilized man. This happy union is said to be sometimes produced in
the pupils of the great public schools of England, who are savages on
the play-ground and gentlemen in the school-room. In no man of our
knowledge has there been combined so much of the best of the forest
chief with so much of the good of the trained man of business as in
Henry Clay. This was one secret of his power over classes of men so
diverse as the hunters of Kentucky and the manufacturers of New
England.
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