The ill-timed publication of a personal
letter defeated Cass in 1848; and within our day the utterance of a
single word, unheard by the candidate to whom it was addressed,
lost the Presidency to Blaine.

The antagonism of Tyler and his adherents eliminated, it is within
the bounds of probability that Henry Clay would have triumphed
in his last struggle for the Presidency. If so, what change might
not have been wrought in the trend of history? Under the splendid
leadership of the "great pacificator," what might have been the
termination of vital questions even then casting their dark shadows
upon our national pathway?

With Clay at the helm, himself the incarnation of the spirit of
compromise, possibly--who can tell?--the evil days so soon to follow
might have been postponed for many generations.

XVI
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

MR. INGERSOLL'S ELOQUENCE WHILE A YOUNG MAN--HIS CANDIDACY FOR
CONGRESS--HIS AGNOSTICISM A HINDRANCE TO HIS POLITICAL ADVANCEMENT
--HIS ORATION AT THE FUNERAL OF HIS BROTHER.

It was in April, 1859, that for the first time I met Robert G.
Ingersoll. He came over from his home in Peoria to attend the
Woodford Circuit Court. He was then under thirty years of age, of
splendid physique, magnetic in the fullest significance of the
word, and one of the most attractive and agreeable of men. He was
almost boyish in appearance, and hardly known beyond the limits of
the county in which he lived. He had but recently moved to Peoria
from the southern part of the State.

To those who remember him it is hardly necessary to say that even at
that early day he gave unmistakable evidence of his marvellous
gifts. His power over a jury was wonderful indeed; and woe betide
the counsel of but mediocre talents who had Ingersoll for an
antagonist in a closely contested case.

The old Court-house at Metamora is yet standing, a monument of the
past; the county seat removed, it has long since fallen from its
high estate. In my boyhood, I have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln
at its bar, and later was a practitioner there myself--and State's
Attorney for the Circuit,--when Mr. Ingersoll was attendant upon
its courts. Rarely at any time or place have words been spoken
more eloquent than fell from the lips of Lincoln and Ingersoll
in that now deserted Court-house, in the years long gone by.

The first appearance of Mr. Ingersoll in the political arena was
in the Presidential struggle of 1860. In his later