ASHLAND, April 15, 1849.
DEAR SIR,—Your favor
of the 27th ultimo, addressed to me at New Orleans, followed and found me here.
I am very grateful
and thankful for the friendly sentiments toward me which your partiality has
prompted you to express. You do me too much honor in instituting any comparison
between me and the renowned men of antiquity. I am in one respect better off
than Moses. He died in sight of, without reaching, the promised land. I occupy
as good a farm as any that he would have found, if he had reached it; and it
has been acquired, not by hereditary descent, but by my own labor.
As to public honors
and public offices, I have perhaps had more than my share of them. At all
events I am contented, and now seek for better, if not higher offices and
honors, in a better world. That we may both meet there, if we never do here, is
the sincere prayer of your friend and obedient servant.
SOURCE: Calvin
Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 587
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