Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/16

4 small log-cabin with the hard earth for a floor, and the schoolmaster an Englishman who passed under the name of Peter Deacon, — a man of an uncertain past and somewhat given to hard drinking, but possessing ability enough to teach the children confided to him reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. When not at school Henry had to work for the support of the family, and he was often seen walking barefooted behind the plough, or riding on a pony to Daricott's mill on the Pamunkey River, using a rope for a bridle and a bag filled with wheat or corn or flour as a saddle. Thus he earned the nickname of “the mill-boy of the Slashes,” which subsequently, in his campaigns for the presidency, was thought to be worth a good many votes.

A few years after her first husband's death, the widow Clay married Captain Henry Watkins, a resident of Richmond, who seems to have been a worthy man and a good step-father to his wife's children. To start young Henry in life Captain Watkins placed him as a “boy behind the counter” in the retail store kept by Richard Denny in the city of Richmond. Henry, who was then fourteen years old, devoted himself for about a year with laudable diligence and fidelity to the duty of drawing molasses and measuring tape, giving his leisure hours to the reading of such books as happened to fall into his hands. But it occurred to Captain Watkins that his step-son, the brightness and activity of whose mind were noticed by him as well as