* * * * *

One day, while Thomas Jefferson was a student at William and Mary College, at Williamsburg, a young friend named Patrick Henry dropped in to see him, and announced that he had come to Williamsburg to be admitted to the bar.

“How long have you studied law?” Jefferson inquired.

“Oh, for over six weeks,” Henry answered.

The story goes that Jefferson advised his friend to go home and study for at least a fortnight longer; but Henry declared that the only way to learn law was to practice it, and went ahead and took the examination, such as it was, and passed!

That was in 1760, and Patrick Henry was twenty-four years old at the time.  He had been a wild boy, cared little for books, and had failed as a farmer and as a merchant before turning to law as a last resort.  Nor as a lawyer was he a great success, the truth being that he lacked the industry and diligence which are essential to success in any profession; but he had one supreme gift, that of lofty and impassioned oratory.  In 1765, as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he made the rafters ring and his auditors turn pale by his famous speech against the stamp act; as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1774, he made the only real speech of the Congress, arousing the delegates from an attitude of mutual suspicion to one of patriotic ardor for a common cause.

“Government,” said he, “is dissolved.  Where are your landmarks, your boundaries of colonies?  The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more.  I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

Samuel Adams said afterwards that, but for that speech, which drew the delegates together and made them forget their differences, the Congress would probably have ended in a wrangle.  And a year later, again in Virginia, in defense of his resolution to arm the militia, he gave utterance to the most famous speech of all, starting quietly with the sentence, “Mr. President, it is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope,” and ending with the tremendous cry:  “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

That was the supreme moment of Patrick Henry’s life.  He did a great work after that, as member of the Continental Congress, as commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, and as governor of the Commonwealth, but never again did he come so near the stars—­as, indeed, few men ever do.

* * * * *

You have all heard the story of Damon and Pythias, true type of devoted friendship, and history abounds in such examples; but sometimes it shows a darker side, and the controlling force in two men’s lives will be hate instead of love, and the end will be shipwreck and tragedy.  Such a story we are to tell briefly here of the lives of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.