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way of a good debate.
    One day, stretched full length on a sack of salt, he was arguing with his friends when a customer entered the store and asked, “Have you any salt, sir?”
    Henry broke off talking only long enough to shake his head. “Justsold the last peck.”
    Henry hadn’t let Thomas Jefferson see his serious side or Thomas had chosen to ignore it. Jefferson certainly didn’t hold out much hope for Henry’s success with the examiners. A candidate for the bar could pick the men to test him, and Thomas knew the lawyers Henry had chosen. They included the Randolph brothers—Peyton, who had studied in London at the Inner Temple, and John, who had studied at Gray’s Inn. Another examiner, Robert Carter Nicholas, was related to the “King” Carter who held three hundred thousand acres of Virginia land. Most distinguished of allwas George Wythe, the lawyer with whom Jefferson hoped one day to serve his apprenticeship.
    The four men did not sit as a board, and there were no written tests. Instead, each lawyer interviewed the applicant in his chambers. Afterward at least two of them had to agree to sign his license. As Patrick Henry went off on his rounds, his appearance tended to work against him. He was tall but rather stooped, and his forehead beetled noticeably. Early in life, his red hair had become a scant fringe, and in public he usually wore a wig. His clothes were cheap and he wore them carelessly. But Henry’s eyes were lively under their long lashes, and he had a habit of paying close attention. His jaw was big, his teeth flashing, and his wide mouth always seemed ready to stretch into a grin. Combined with the flash to his eyes, the half-smile gave Henry a considerable appeal.
    It was appeal wasted on George Wythe. He asked Henry a few questions, refused to sign his license and bowed him out of his office. John Randolph was also put off by the young man’s lack of polish, but he sensed an original mind and let the examination stretch to several hours. Randolph saw that Henry knew nothing about municipal law, but when they took up natural law and general history his arguments were bold and strong. At one point, challenging his interpretation of the common law, Randolph said, “You defend your opinions well, sir, but now to the law and the testimony.”
    He led Henry to a shelf of books and paged through one of them. “You have never seen these books,” Randolph said, “nor this principle of law. Yet you are right and I am wrong. And from this lesson you have given me—you must excuse me for saying it—I will never trust to appearance again.”
    Randolph added that if Patrick Henry’s hard work matched his gifts, he could become a valuable member of the legal profession.
    That may simply have been a gracious way of yielding to the inevitable, since Randolph seemed to believe that Henry had already obtained the necessary two signatures. In fact he had only one, extorted from kindly Robert Carter Nicholas after much importuning and Henry’s solemn promise to study more law when he returned to Hanover. Thomas Jefferson said afterward thatthe Randolph brothers had signed Henry’s license with as much reluctance as good manners permitted them to show. But he granted that while both men lamented Henry’s ignorance, they agreed that he was a youngman of genius.
    License in hand, Henry began to build a lucrative practice in Hanover. Virginia had once considered barring all lawyers from the colony because so many of them were unskilled and money-hungry, and at the time Henry opened his office a law forbade lawyers from charging exorbitant fees. Lawyers like the Randolphs were winning respect for the profession, however, and over the next three years Henry carved out a place for himself by representing the poor and the dispossessed. His sympathy came naturally to Henry, who, marrying at eighteen, had been as poor as most of his clients. His bride, Sarah, had been no better off, and between the two sets of