unfavorable conditions, the youth clung to his resolve. He learned
what he could at the country schoolhouse, during the time the
duties of the farm permitted him to attend school. He committed
speeches to memory, and recited them aloud, sometimes in the
forest, sometimes while working in the cornfield, and frequently
in a barn with a horse and an ox for his audience.

In his fifteenth year he left the grocery store where he had been
clerking to take a position in the office of the clerk of the High
Court of Chancery. There he became interested in law, and by
reading and study began at once to supplement the scanty education
of his childhood. To such good purpose did he use his
opportunities that in 1797, when only twenty years old, he was
licensed by the judges of the court of appeals to practice law.

When he moved from Richmond to Lexington, Kentucky, the same year
to begin practice for himself, he had no influential friends, no
patrons, and not even the means to pay his board. Referring to
this time years afterward, he said, "I remember how comfortable I
thought I should be if I could make one hundred pounds Virginia
money (less than five hundred dollars) per year; and with what
delight I received the first fifteen-shilling fee."

Contrary to his expectations, the young lawyer had "immediately
rushed into a lucrative practice." At the age of twenty-seven he
was elected to the Kentucky legislature. Two years later he was
sent to the United States Senate to fill out the remainder of the
term of a senator who had withdrawn. In 1811 he was elected to
Congress, and made Speaker of the national House of
Representatives. He was afterward elected to the United States