Spirit Of The Age

CLAY CHALLENGED CHOATE

Kentuckian Danced a Breakdown and Choate Cut a Pigeon Wing.

In the long ago antebellum days, when southern aristocracy made its summer headquarters at the noted Virginia Springs, where the planters came up from the Carolinas, Kentucky, Georgia and Mississippi in their carriages, with great baggage trains and a retinue of servants, and when they came the 1st of June and stayed until frost fell, those were gay old times at the mountain resorts, when life was worth the pain of living.

Beginning with the first register in 1805 and coming on down to 1860, one finds a succession of historical names. There are the Sumters, the Pickenses and the Hamptons of the Carolinas; the Clays and Marshalls and Crittendens of Kentucky; Corwin and Ewing and Trimble of Ohio; the Choates and Websters and Pierces of New England; Dickinson, Marcy and Dallas of the middle states; Cass and Douglas and Benton from the then far west; the Floyds, Cabells, Prestons and a galaxy of bright names from Virginia; the Carrolls from Maryland, and a host of others whose names have rendered American history illustrious.

Here these old notables came in their shadbellied coats and sideboard collars, and a proper, dignified time they had of it as they mingled their sulphur water and mint juleps together and talked politics. It was a way back in 1837, when there must have been something in the wind of importance to the Whig party. On a musty old page of the hotel register of that year, in that fine, almost feminine handwriting that is familiar to all, we find this inscription, "H. Clay, Kentucky," while among the next day's arrivals are Rufus Choate, Massachusetts; Thomas Corwin, Ohio; William C. Rives, Virginia, and Millard Fillmore, New York.

Those were the days when the making of a julep was an art as well as a domestic accomplishment. The night before Mr. Clay's departure from the Springs he gave a banquet in his cottage to his friends. Fortunately there is still a living eyewitness to that entertainment, and, if his description can be relied upon, it was a gala event that transcends all modern blow outs. Old Uncle Jimmie Patterson, the venerable gatekeeper, who has been an attache of the White Sulphur from time immemorial, was the floor servant on the row in which the Clay cottage was located and helped to serve the banquet. He says that the deportment of the host and the guests was eminently proper until about the hour of midnight, but from that time of the night until the morning dawned there was a high old time on the premises. When the cloth had been removed and the Powhatan pipes were brought in - the degenerate practice of cigar and cigarette was not in vogue in those halcyon days - some one called for music, and a messenger was sent for a negro fiddler, who soon appeared with his old fashioned instrument. The old fiddler started in with "Money Musk" and then played "Sugar In the Gourd," but when he touched up "Mississippi Sawyer" Mr. Clay stepped into the middle of the floor and gave them a Kentucky breakdown.

This was a fair challenge for Mr. Choate, who followed with a New England pigeon wing. When the old negro struck the chord of "Old Virginia Never Tire," the courtly Rives, afterward minister to France, felt that the reputation of the Old Dominion was at stake and, shedding his coat, executed the double shuffle with a skill that would make a minstrel man envious. And thus the fun grew fast and furious until the gray dawn peeped over the mountain tops. - Louisville Courier-Journal.