The character of Henry Clay had in it various traits that were peculiarly Irish.  The Irishman knows because he knows, and that’s all there is about it.  He is dramatic, emotional, impulsive, humorous without suspecting it, and will fight friend or foe on small provocation.  Then he is much given to dealing in that peculiar article known as palaver.  The farewell address of Henry Clay to the Senate, and his return thereto a few years later, comprise one of the most Irishlike proceedings to be found in history.

There is no finer man on earth than your “thrue Irish gintleman,” and Henry Clay had not only all the highest and most excellent traits of the “gintleman,” but a few also of his worst.  Clay made friends as no other American statesman ever did.  “To come within reach of the snare of his speech was to love him,” wrote one man.  People loved him because he was affectionate, for love only goes out to love.  And the Irish heart is a heart of love.  Henry Clay called himself a Christian, and yet at times he was picturesquely profane.  We have this on the authority of the “Diary” of John Quincy Adams, which of course we must believe, for even that other fighting Irishman, Andrew Jackson, said, “Adams’ Diary is probably correct—­damn it!”

Clay was convivial in all the word implies; his losses at cards often put him in severe financial straits; he stood ready to back his opinion concerning a Presidential election, a horse-race or a dog-fight, and with it all he held himself “personally responsible”—­having fought two duels and engaged in various minor “misunderstandings.”

And yet he was a great statesman—­one of the greatest this country has produced, and as a patriot no man was ever more loyal.  It was America with him first and always.  His reputation, his fortune, his life, his all, belonged to America.

* * * * *

The city of Lexington contains about twenty-five thousand inhabitants.  In Lexington two distinct forms of civilization meet.

One is the civilization of the F.F.V., converted into that peculiar form of noblesse known the round world over as the Blue-Grass Aristocracy.  Blue-Grass Society represents leisure and luxury and the generous hospitality of friendships generations old; it means broad acres, noble mansions reached by roadways that stray under wide-spreading oaks and elms where squirrels chatter and mild-eyed cows look at you curiously; it means apple-orchards, gardens lined with boxwood, capacious stables and long lines of whitewashed cottages, around which swarm a dark cloud of dependents who dance and sing and laugh—­and work when they have to.

Over against these there are to be seen trolley-cars, electric lights, smart rows of new brick houses on lots thirty by one hundred, negro policemen in uniforms patterned after those worn by the Broadway Squad, streets torn up by sewers and conduits, steam-rollers with an unsavory smell of tar and asphalt, push-buttons and a Hello-Exchange.