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108 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS of our Civil War period — Henry Clay, Brutus J. Clay, and Cassius M. Clay, Old Dick Johnson, Ben Hardin, Tom Mar- shall, Prentice, the BrecHnridges, the Blairs, the Prestons, Morgan the raider, George Vest, William J. Stone, Joe Black- bum, Oscar Underwood, and Champ Clark. No more remark- able instance of this prolific output of men of genius for pub- lic affairs could ever be found than now exists in the National House of Eepresentatives, where the Speaker, the Majority Leader, Mr. Underwood, and the Minority Leader, Mr. Mann, all trace their families to the same county in Kentucky! At one time the grandfathers of Mr. Clark and Mr. Underwood were law partners, which partnership was followed by one be- tween Judge Beauchamp and Mr. Mann's uncle. Judge Jones. And these three men have not risen by accident to their high places in the councils of the nation. Nowhere does a man more certainly gravitate to the place which of right belongs to him than in the House. In that close daily association each man soon becomes known for what he is, and the niche into which he falls is the one in which he fits. In the last twenty years there has been in the Capitol no triumvirate of leaders equal in capacity to that of Clark, Underwood, and Mann. The climate and the limestone soil of great fertility and productive power were well suited to the further development of a strong and self-reliant race. The blood was mainly Eng- lish, with an intermixture of Scotch and Scotch-Irish. Yoimg Clark grew up in an environment and under circumstances well calculated to develop all the qualities of mind and strength of body which he inherited from a long line of right- living ancestors. When he was a youth, farm work brought part of the money necessary for his sustenance in college; and breaking hemp, cradling wheat, and cultivating com with a double-shovel plow from daylight until dark made a phys- ical giant of him who could stand up under it. That was be- fore the day of self-binders and ri(Kng plows. Each farmer kept his flock of sheep, for wool and meat; the wool wa» scoured and carded by the women folks, spun during the long winter evenings by the light of the open fire, and woven into homespun or linsey-woolsey on the old hand loom, which also