112 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS passed the examination — surely a testimonial to the efiBciency of the schools of that day and kind. When the boy was abont twelve, his father secured a place for him on the farm of John Call. John, on account of trouble with his eyes, could not read, but he took a great interest in politics, and agreed to subscribe for Prentice's daily paper, the old Louisville Journal (now the famous CouHer-Joumdl^ edited by Colonel Henry Watterson), provided young Clark would read it to him. While Clark was working for Call, Morgan and his men came through that region and Call put the boy on the back of a magnificent chestnut mare and told him to take the horses to the woods, for Morgan had a fine eye for a good saddler. He had just started when the vanguard of that daring body of cavalry burst into view at a turn in the road, the evening sun shining on their equipment. The boy paused. At that moment seven home-guards dashed out of the village and charged the whole of Morgan's cavalry I It was all over in a moment. But the incident of the charge fired the fighting blood of the boy and he stole away the next day to enlist in a company being raised in the county. He stood on his tiptoes and swelled out his chest, but they would not take him. Later he tried to get into a regiment that came through the region where he lived, but he was still too young. But he was growing and learning, reading newspapers, novels, histories, slipping away to attend political meetings and to hear the country lawyers in the Circuit Court room at the county seat. He saw his father occasionally, and one day he admiringly read aloud to his father a copy of Patrick Henry's speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses. One line that struck the boy's poetic fancy ran : **The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. ' ' His father said: **That is from the Bible; if you want to learn the use of terse English, why don't you get it at first handt" From that day young Clark buried his nose in the Bible, learning Job and St. Paul by heart. He lingered long over the splen- did rhapsody beginning : * * Though I speak with the tongues
