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  bore awxay the palm. Upon kis return to Mountsterling his funds
  were exhausted and lie again became a private tutor while he
  prosecuted the study of law with Judge JAMES TRIMBLE. He
  persevered in his labors and his studies till the year 1830, when
  upon the death of his friend STOCKTON, whose affairs required the
  superintendance of a lawyer and to whom he held himself bound
  by a debt of gratitude, in his twenty-first year he obtained a
  license to practice and undertook as his first professional act,
  without charge, to settle and arrange the complicated and em-
  barrassed affairs of his friend. In the fall of 1831 he was en-
  abled to attend the law lectures here, when he became a distin-
  guished member of your society. In the spring of 1832 he re-
  ceived the appointment of commonwealth's attorney, and in
  August before he had attained his twenty-third year he was mar-
  ried to the eldest daughter of the late AIATTHEW JOUITT. It is not
  among the least interesting circumstances which concentrate in
  the union of these two orphans, that the dowerless daughter of
  Kentucky's most gifted artist should have found a tutor in her
  childhood every way adequate to form her taste and fashion her
  understanding, and that in the dawning graces of her first wo-
manhood reflecting back upon its source the light she had bor-
rowed should have drawn and fastened to her side as friend and
protector through life, that same boy preceptor from whose pre-
cocious mind her own had drawn its nutriment and its strength.
JOUITT and MENEFEE! what an union of names, what a nucleus
for the public hopes and sympathies to grow and cluster round,
to cling and cleave to. And they are united in the person of a
boy, a glorious beauteous boy-upon whose young brow and
every feature is stamped the seal of his inheritance. I have
seen this scion of a double stock through whose young veins is
poured in blending currents the double tide of genius and of art.
Bless thee JOUITT MENEFEE, and may heaven which has imparted
the broad brow of the statesman orator along with the painter's
ambrosial head and glowing eye, may heaven shield and preserve
thee boy, from the misfortunes of thy house.
  Mr. Menefee retained his appointment, and located at Mount-
sterling continued the practice of law with extraordinary success
in the various counties of that mountainous district till August
1836, when he was returned the member from Montgomery to