Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/255

 REMINISCENCES OF SEVENTY YEARS 247 no more so than was Lincoln. They were both poor boys and had to struggle for a living. Clay was the son of a poor widow and went to mill with a sack on a mule's back, borrowed books and read by fire, not torchlight. Lincoln did the same thing, only he did not have to support a widowed mother. Clay was elected to Congress when a very young man and was speaker of the house almost all the time. He came very near getting beat by voting for the enormous salary of $1500 per year fof Congressmen instead of $5 per day, as they had been getting ; but the next election the Democrats brought that against him with powerful effect. This is the way he defended himself: Without trying to justify himself in the least, one of his most substantial friends was selected to notify him of his doom. This old appointee, with rifle in hand and tears in his eyes, ap- proached Clay with almost death silence. "Well, Henry, I have been appointed to notify you that we can't stand that $1500 salary." "John," he said, "please let me look at your gun. That looks like a good gun, or has been a good gun." "Yes, and it is just as good as it ever was." "Well, John, doesn't it sometimes flash in the pan ?" "Yes, but very seldom." "Well, what do you do with it then, John ?" "Oh, I just pick the flint and try it again." "Well, can't you pick the flint and try me again ?" "We will, we will !" sounded a hundred voices. Well, from that time on Henry Clay held Kentucky in the hollow of his hand. But like all or most all of our most bril- liant men, he never could be elected President of the United States. But when his last defeat by James K. Polk, of Ten- nessee, a man comparatively unknown, came to Clay, this was a little more than the old gent, my father, S. K. Barlow, could stand. He said he would leave the states that did not recognize their great statesman and go to Oregon. By the time Oregon became a state he expected he and Clay would both be dead. But Polk made a better president than the old gentleman thought he would. He was really elected as an Oregon man,