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ihe House of Representatives of Kentucky. It was the fortune
of your speaker to day, to have served in the same body during
that session, and it was at this period that he first saw bind be-
came acquainted with the illustrious subject of this discourse.
The impression which Mr. Menefee then made was instantaneous,
and ineffaceable. He was in his twenty-seventh year, but the
lightness of his hair, his delicate complexion and almost beardless
face, and a certain juvenile outline of person, made him look to a
transient observer some years younger than he really was. 1
knew nothing then, nor till long after, of his private history. He
stood among his colleagues -in legislation, almost an entire stran-
ger. He was surrounded by no peculiar circumstances or asso-
ciations of influence or of interest. No pomp of heraldry blazon-
ed his hitherto obscure name; no hereditary honors glittered
around his pale brow; no troop of influential connexions or famni-
ly partisans stood ready to puff him into prompt notice, or to force
him upon fame. Even the incidents of his young life which would
have won for his chivalric spirit an admiring and generous sym-
pathy were unknown. The storms through which his star had
waded in its ascent, the strife perpetual which he had waged from
infancy with evil circumstance and most malignant fortune had
rolled over him unknown or unheeded by that world to whose
service and applause he had been fighting his way. He came in-
to the lists unattended, without device, armorial bearing, squire,
pursuivant, or herald. Entertaining the views which Mr. Mene-
fee did, it cannot be doubted that he regarded the Legislature of
Kentucky as an important theatre to him. It was the entrance into
that temple upon whose loftiest turret his eye had been fastened
from childhood. The scene was practically at least an entirely
new one to him. He was well aware, no man more so, of the
importance of first impressions upon a body constituted as that of
which he was a member. One would naturally have expected
from a person situated as he was, great anxiety, not unmixed
with bashfulness and timidity in his debut. You might have anti-
eipated too, the selection of some question of great and general
interest, and the careful and elaborate preparation, by so young
atd aspiring a member, of a speech duly laden with flowers, and
studded with all the rhetorical gems of trope and figure. No
such thing. He threw himself easily and naturally, and with apr