But Patrick Henry was duly admitted, although George Wythe protested. Then
Patrick went back home to tend bar (the other kind) for Laban, his
father-in-law, for full four years. He studied hard and practised a little
betimes--and his is the only instance that history records of a barkeeper
acquiring wisdom while following his calling; but for the encouragement of
budding youth I write it down.

* * * * *

No doubt it was the example of Patrick Henry that caused Jefferson to
adopt his profession. But it was the literary side of law that first
attracted him--not the practise of it. As a speaker he was singularly
deficient, a slight physical malformation of the throat giving him a very
poor and uncertain voice. But he studied law, and after all it does not
make much difference what a man studies--all knowledge is related, and the
man who studies anything if he keeps at it will become learned.

So Jefferson studied in the office of George Wythe, and absorbed all that
Fauquier had to offer, and grew wise in the companionship of Doctor Small.
From a red-headed, lean, lank, awkward mountaineer, he developed into a
gracious and graceful young man who has been described as "auburn-haired."
And the evolution from being red-headed to having red hair, and from that
to being auburn-haired, proves he was the genuine article. Still he was
hot handsome--that word can not be used to describe him until he was
sixty--for he was freckled, one shoulder wets higher than the other, and
his legs were so thin that they could not do justice to small-clothes.

Yet it will not do to assume that thin men are weak, any more than to take
it for granted that fat men are strong. Jefferson was as muscular as a