"
The appropriateness of these sentiments to the occasion and to the man
is evident to every one who remembers that Lafayette's love of George
Washington was a Frenchman's romantic passion. Nor, indeed, did he
need to have a sensitive French heart to be moved to tears by such
words and such a welcome.
From 1822 to 1848, a period of twenty-six years, Henry Clay lived the
strange life of a candidate for the Presidency. It was enough to ruin
any man, body and soul. To live always in the gaze of millions; to be
the object of eulogy the most extravagant and incessant from one half
of the newspapers, and of vituperation still more preposterous from
the other half; to be surrounded by flatterers interested and
disinterested, and to be confronted by another body intent on
misrepresenting every act and word; to have to stop and consider the
effect of every utterance, public and private, upon the next
"campaign"; not to be able to stir abroad without having to harangue a
deputation of political friends, and stand to be kissed by ladies and
pump-handled by men, and hide the enormous bore of it beneath a fixed
smile till the very muscles of the face are rigid; to receive by every
mail letters enough for a large town; to have your life written
several times a year; to be obliged continually to refute calumnies
and "define your position"; to live under a horrid necessity to be
pointedly civil to all the world; to find your most casual remarks and
most private conversations getting distorted in print,--this, and more
than this, it was to be a candidate for the Presidency.
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