too, he wore low-cut shoes and white stockings, and about his neck was swathed a white lawn tie in many folds, as was the custom of the time, and over this was turned his high collar. In this garb his portrait has been painted many times, and this is the outward Webster that comes to the mental vision of every man who ever saw him in public. It is impossible to conceive of him as being at any time and under any circumstances a trivial or undignified person. He always was on dress-parade. He was always statuesque, and his was always a figure to compel respect. It was said of him that when a stranger he passed through the streets of Liverpool, England, casual wayfarers looked after him and said, "That must be a king;" and on one occasion when with a friend he had had sudden occasion to enter a New Haven bar-room, the keeper of the place, startled and astonished by the grandeur of Webster's appearance, said breathlessly, "That man ought to be President at the very least."

Yet the testimony of his intimates shows that his disposition was playful, and we know that he took great delight in the smallest details of house and home keeping. He had an immense fund of humor. He was fond of the pleasures of the table and chose his viands and his wines with anxious and appreciative care. While he was Secretary of State, and an important treaty-that which settled the Northeastern boundary question— was coming to a vote in the Senate, he paused in the midst of the burdens of State and wrote a letter to his farmer in New England, giving ex

plicit directions about the care of certain salt. hay, the building of a piggery, and other similar

matters.

There are extant many letters giving charming glimpses of the man in undress, as we may say. One of these is addressed to John Taylor, who had charge of his farm in Franklin, N. H. It was written just after Webster's famous 7th of March speech, delivered in 1852, when the great Senator was overwhelmed with the bitterness of the political contest then raging, not only about him in Washington, but all over the country. Thus he begins: "John Taylor. Go ahead. The heart of the winter is broken and before the first day of April all your land may be plowed. Buy the oxen of Captain Marston if you think the price fair. Pay for the hay. I send you a check for $160 for these two objects. Put the great oxen in a condition to be turned out to be fattened. You have a good horse team and I think in addition to this four oxen and a pair of four-year-old steers will do your work."

After giving directions of this kind with great minuteness and admonishing Taylor that he wants "no pennyroyal crops," and that his mother's garden must be kept in the best order at any cost, he turns to politics, as if it were impossible to keep his thoughts out of the commotion going on about him, and says:

"There are some animals that live best in the fire, and there are some men who delight in heat, smoke, combustion and even general conflagration. They do not value the things which make

peace; they enjoy only controversy, contention, and strife. Have no communion with such persons either as neighbors or politicians. You have no more right to say that slavery ought not to exist in Virginia than a Virginian has to say that slavery ought to exist in New Hampshire. This is a question left to every State to decide for itself, and if we mean to keep the States together we must leave to every State this power of deciding for itself. John Taylor, you are a free man; you possess good principles, you have a large family to rear and provide for by your labor. Be thankful for the government which does not oppress you, which does not bear you down by excessive taxation, but which holds out to you and to yours the hope of all the blessings which liberty, industry, and security may give. John Taylor, thank God morning and evening that you are born in such a country. John Taylor, never write me another word upon politics."

Webster, through all his life, was easily influenced by others, especially when those others had won his confidence and affection. His conduct in the matter of the lucrative court-clerkship offered him in 1804, when he most needed. money, was a good example of this trait. His brother Ezekiel was then manfully fighting his way to college; Daniel was occasionally earning a little money in the law office of Mr. Christopher Gore, of Boston, when the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, in which his father practised in New Hampshire, offered Daniel the place of

clerk at a salary of $1,500 a year. To the young law student this was a princely income; it would be equal to five or ten thousand dollars in these days. That income would enable him to smooth Ezekiel's road to the hill of learning, lift the home mortgage and lighten the labors of his father's last years. He joyfully prepared to return to New Hampshire and enter upon his profitable and welcome duties. To his intense astonishment and disappointment, Mr. Gore coldly expressed his disapproval of the change. He pointed out the danger that he might be removed at any time by the favor of the judges, that the salary might be reduced, and that it led to nothing, and would block any great career that might open before him. Dazed and dumbfounded by this unexpected presentation of the case, Webster reluctantly admitted its justness, and, much to the amazement of his father, declined the post. It was well. Nevertheless, even the narrowing labors of that small office could not have long crippled or hedged in the genuis of Daniel Webster.

His first great legal argument was that in the celebrated Dartmouth College case which was argued in 1818 before the United States Supreme Court. As a lawyer, he had a certain divine instinct to seize upon the points of any case which was committed to him. On one occasion an important lawsuit was put in his hands by a firm of lawyers to argue before the United States Supreme Court. The briefs in the case were sent to him in Washington by the hand of a

junior member of the law firm, and when Webster looked the papers over he said: "And is this all?" The younger man said timidly: "There is another point which I have presented to the firm, but which they thought not material," and then he stated the case. Webster's eyes glowed and he said: "My dear sir, that is the point;" and on this he won the case. The Dartmouth College case was one in which the Legislature of the

State of New Hampshire had interfered with the interior government of the college and had attempted to change its course of direction. Webster's contention was that "the principle in our constitutional jurisprudence which regards a charter of a private corporation as a contract and places it under the protection of the Constitution of the United States debarred the Legislature from interfering." The decision in the case, which was made February, 1819, affirmed the ground taken by Webster and established a precedent in law which was of the highest importance.