ers and small traders, sportsmen, loafers,
slaves and the drivers of slaves, and, more than all, those bucolic
Solons of old Virginia, the good-humored, illiterate, thriftless
Caucasian consumers of tobacco and whiskey, who, cordially consenting
that all the hard work of the world should be done by the children of
Ham, were thus left free to commune together in endless debate on the
tavern porch or on the shady side of the country store,--young Patrick
had learned somewhat of the lawyer's art of putting things; he could
make men laugh, could make them serious, could set fire to their
enthusiasms. What more he might do with such gifts nobody seems to
have guessed; very likely few gave it any thought at all. In that
rugged but munificent profession at whose outward gates he then
proceeded to knock, it was altogether improbable that he would burden
himself with much more of its erudition than was really necessary for
a successful general practice in Virginia in his time, or that he
would permanently content himself with less.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[6] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 20.

[7] MS.

[8] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 396.

[9] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[10] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[11] MS.

[12] MS.

[13] MS.

[14] MS.

[15] Henry Adams, _Life of Gallatin_, 59, 60.

[16] Wirt, 9.

[17] Wirt, 13. This is the passage on which Jefferson, in his extreme
old age, made the characteristically inaccurate comment: "His
biographer says, 'He read Plutarch every year.' I doubt if he ever
read a volume of it in his life." Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

CHAPTER III

BECOMES A LAWYER

Some time in the early spring of 1760, Thomas Jefferson, then a lad in
the College of William and Mary, was surprised by the arrival in
Williamsburg of his jovial acquaintance, Patrick Henry, and still more
by the announcement of the latter that, in the brief interval since
their merrymakings together at Hanover, he had found time to study
law, and had actually come up to the capital to seek an admission to
the bar.

In the accounts that we have from Henry's contemporaries respecting
the length of time during which he was engaged in preparing for his
legal examination, there are certain discrepancies,--some of these
accounts saying that it was nine months, others six or eight months,
others six weeks. Henry himself told a friend that his original study