He was a noble stalwart--a perfect type of the hunters of Kentucky--who could bring down a squirrel from the highest bough and hit a bull's eye at a hundred yards after he was three score and ten.
It was he who delighted my childhood with bear stories and properly lurid narrations of the braves in buckskin and the bucks in paint and feathers, with now and then a red-coat to give pungency and variety to the tale.

He would sing me to sleep with hunting songs.

He would take me with him afield to carry the game bag, and I was the only one of many grandchildren to be named in his will.

In my thoughts and in my dreams he has been with me all my life, a memory and an example, and an ever glorious inspiration.
Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton were among my earliest heroes.
II Born in a Democratic camp, and growing to manhood on the Democratic side of a political battlefield, I did not accept, as I came later to realize, the transcendent personal merit and public service of Henry Clay.

Being of Tennessee parentage, perhaps the figure of Andrew Jackson came between; perhaps the rhetoric of Daniel Webster.