He spoke only in the ordinary tone of conversation; but
his voice filled the room as the organ fills a great cathedral, and
the ladies stood spellbound as the swelling cadences rolled about the
vast apartment. We have heard much of Whitefield's piercing voice and
Patrick Henry's silvery tones, but we cannot believe that either of
those natural orators possessed an organ superior to Clay's majestic
bass. No one who ever heard him speak will find it difficult to
believe what tradition reports, that he was the peerless star of the
Richmond Debating Society in 1795.
Oratory was then in the highest vogue. Young Virginians did not need
to look beyond the sea in order to learn that the orator was the man
most in request in the dawn of freedom. Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan,
and Pitt were inconceivably imposing names at that day; but was not
Patrick Henry the foremost man in Virginia, only because he could
speak and entertain an audience? And what made John Adams President
but his fiery utterances in favor of the Declaration of Independence?
There were other speakers then in Virginia who would have had to this
day a world-wide fame if they had spoken where the world could hear
them.
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