AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
fervor quite unusual. Recognizing the nascent ability of the youth, my father invited him to his house and encouraged him to go to college. On his return from Yale, a homely and scrawny stripling, wearing a white necktie, he discussed in public in the Temperance Hall, with my father, the imposing but rather abstract question suggested by reading Locke, “Are ideas innate?” I listened, knowing as little as they did what it was all about and wishing I were in bed. Nathan and Franklin were both held by the villagers in more affection, if less admiration, than Wayne.
My father, being the most influential person in his section of the county, took an interest and active part in public affairs and at his home he entertained many persons of distinction and notoriety who chanced to come to the neighborhood. Like all other Whigs, he was enthusiastic over Henry Clay and the fortunes of that eloquent, magnetic and compromising statesman. In the greatest and most disappointing of his contests in 1844, on the third of October, there was a tumultuous gathering of the Whigs at Valley Forge, and that night and the next day Daniel Webster was the guest of my father.
Among several letters written to my father by Clay, the following comment upon that campaign is of interest:
Ashland, 28th November, 1844.
Dear Sir:
I received and thank you for your friendly letter communicating some of the causes which occasioned the recent most unexpected defeat of the Whigs in Pennsylvania. They are curious as matters of history; but I apprehend there is no present remedy.
I am grateful for the good opinion of me which prompts you to desire my return to the National Councils; but I have no intention of doing so. My desire is to pass the remnant of my days in private life. Grateful to my ardent and faithful friends, I shall never cease to cherish the warmest affection for them, and, in my private station, to co-operate with them in advancing the happiness and prosperity of our country.
- I am, truly, your friend and obedient servant,
