A most pleasant argument.

>Not all of [John Randolph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/John_Wesley_Jarvis_-_John_Randolph_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)’s exchanges with his colleagues were acerbic. One day he got into an argument with his Virginia colleague, Daniel V. Sheffey, during the course of which the latter made some playful remarks about him. Randolph then offered Sheffey some advice; logic, he said, was Sheffey’s forte, and he ought therefore to confine himself to logic and avoid wit, for which he had no talent. >Sheffey at once thanked Randolph for the advice, but went on to say he didn’t like to be in debt and had some advice of his own to offer in return. Nature, he went on, had been bountiful to Randolph in bestowing on him “extraordinary wit,” but she had at the same time “denied him any powers of argument,” and his advice therefore was for Randolph “to confine himself to the regions of wit, and never attempt to soar into those of logic.” >Amused by the rejoinder, Randolph announced that he had no alternative but to retract what he had said about Sheffey, for “he had shown himself to be a man of wit as well as of logic!” ________________________________ **Source:** Boller, Paul F. “On the Floor.” *Congressional Anecdotes*. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. 184. Print. **Original Source Listed:** Epes Sargent, *The Life and Public Services of henry Clay* (Auburn, N.Y., 1852), 96. ________________________________ **Further Reading:** [John Randolph / John Randolph of Roanoke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Randolph_of_Roanoke) [Daniel Sheffey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Sheffey)