nsibility gravitate to him who can shoulder it, and trust
to the man who deserves it.

It was in Kissam's office that Jay acquired that habit of reticence and
serene poise which, becoming fixed in character, made his words carry such
weight in later years. He never gave snapshot opinions, or talked at
random, or voiced any sentiment for which he could not give a reason.

His companions were usually men much older than he. At the "Moot Club" he
took part with James Duane, who was to be New York's first continental
mayor; Gouverneur Morris, who had not at that time acquired the wooden
leg which he once snatched off and brandished with happy effect before a
Paris mob; and Samuel Jones, who was to take as 'prentice and drill that
strong man, De Witt Clinton.

Before his years of apprenticeship were over, John Jay, the quiet, the
modest, the reticent, was known as a safe and competent lawyer--Kissam
having pushed him forward as associate counsel in various difficult cases.

Meantime, certain chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, and
the example had been followed by the "Mohawks" in New York. British
oppression had made many Tories lukewarm, and then English rapacity had
transformed these Tories into Whigs. Jay was one of these; and in
newspapers and pamphlets, and from the platform, he had pleaded the cause
of the Colonies. Opposition crystallized his reasons, and threats only
served to make him reaffirm the truths he had stated.

So prominent had his utterances made his name, that one fine day he was
nominated to attend the first Congress of the Colonies to be held in
Philadelphia.

In August, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, we find him leaving his office
in New York in charge of a clerk, and riding horseback over to the town of
Elizabeth, there joining his father-in-law, and the two starting for
Philadelphia. On the road they fell in with John Adams, who kept a diary.
That night at the tavern where they stopped, the sharp-eyed Yankee
recorded the fact of meeting these new friends and added, "Mr. Jay is a
young gentleman of the law ... and Mr. Scott says a hard student and a
very good speaker."

And so they journeyed on across the State to Trenton and down the Delaware
River to Philadelphia, visiting, and cautiously discussing great issues as
they went. Samuel Adams, too, was in the party, as reticent as Jay. Jay
was twenty-nine and Samuel Adams fifty-two years old, but they became good
friends, and Samue