and often, as was the custom then all over the world. It was his
boast, even in those wild days, that he never played at home, and
never had a pack of cards in his house; but when the lawyers and
judges were assembled during court sessions, there was much high play
among them at the tavern after the day's work was done. In 1806, when
Mr. Clay was elected to the Senate, he resolved to gamble no
more,--that is, to play at hazard and "brag" no more,--and he kept his
resolution. Whist, being a game depending partly on skill, was not
included in this resolution; and whist was thenceforth a very favorite
game with him, and he greatly excelled in it. It was said of him, as
it was of Charles James Fox, that, at any moment of a hand, he could
name all the cards that remained to be played. He discountenanced high
stakes; and we believe he never, after 1806, played for more than five
dollars "a corner." These, we know, were the stakes at Ghent, where he
played whist for many months with the British Commissioners during the
negotiations for peace in 1815. We mention his whist-playing only as
part of the evidence that he was a gay, pleasant, easy man of the
world,--not a student, not a thinker, not a philosopher. Often, in
reading over his speeches of this period, we are ready to exclaim,
"Ah! Mr. Clay, if you had played whist a little less, and studied
history and statesmanship a great deal more, you would have avoided
some errors!" A trifling anecdote related by Mr. Colton lets us into
the Speaker's way of life. "How can you preside over that House
to-day?" asked a friend, as he set Mr. Clay down at his own door,
_after sunrise_, from a party. "Come up, and you shall see how I will
throw the reins over their necks," replied the Speaker, as he stepped
from the carriage.[2]

But when noble feeling and a gifted tongue sufficed for the occasion,
how grandly sometimes he acquitted himself in those brilliant years,