listen. From every mouth the tale of sorrow was repeated with new aggravations. Pictures of their own distress, or of that of their neighbours, were exhibited in all the hues which imagination can annex to pestilence and poverty.

My preconceptions of the evil now appeared to have fallen short of the truth. The dangers into which I was rushing seemed more numerous and imminent than I had previously imagined. I wavered not in my purpose. A panic crept to my heart, which more vehement exertions were necessary to subdue or control; but I harboured not a momentary doubt that the course which I had taken was prescribed by duty. There was no difficulty or reluctance in proceeding. All for which my efforts were demanded was to walk in this path without tumult or alarm.

Various circumstances had hindered me from setting out upon this journey as early as was proper. My frequent pauses to listen to the narratives of travellers contributed likewise to procrastination. The sun had nearly set before I reached the precincts of the city. I pursued the track which I had formerly taken, and entered High Street after nightfall.

Instead of equipages and a throng of passengers, the voice of levity and glee, which I had formerly observed, and which the mildness of the season would, at other times, have produced, I found nothing but a dreary solitude.

The market-place, and each side of this magnificent avenue, were illuminated, as before, by lamps; but between the verge of Schuylkill and the heart of the city I met not more than a dozen figures; and these were ghostlike, wrapped in cloaks, from behind which they cast upon me glances of wonder and suspicion, and as I approached, changed their course, to avoid touching me. Their clothes were sprinkled with vinegar, and their nostrils defended from contagion by some powerful perfume.

I cast a look upon the houses, which I recollected to have formerly been, at this hour, brilliant with lights, resounding with lively voices, and thronged with busy faces. Now they were closed, above and below; dark, and without tokens of being inhabited. From the upper windows of some, a gleam sometimes fell upon the pavement I was traversing, and showed that their tenants had not fled, but were secluded or disabled.

These tokens were new, and awakened all my panics. Death seemed to hover over this scene, and I dreaded that the floating pestilence had already lighted on my frame. I had scarcely overcome these tremors, when I approached a house the door of which was opened, and before which stood a vehicle, which I presently recognized to be a hearse.

The driver was seated on it. I stood still to mark his visage, and to observe the course which he proposed to take. Presently a coffin, borne by two men, issued from the house. The driver was a negro; but his companions were white. Their features were marked by ferocious indifference to danger or pity. One of them, as he assisted in thrusting the coffin into the cavity provided for it, said, “I'll be damned if I think the poor dog was quite dead. It wasn't the fever that ailed him, but the sight of the girl and her mother on the floor. I wonder how they all got into that room. What carried them there?" The other surlily muttered, "Their legs, to-be-sure.” "But what should they hug together in one

room for?"

"To save us trouble, to-be-sure.”

“And I thank them with all my heart; but, damn it, it wasn't right to put him in his coffin before the breath was fairly gone. I thought the last look he gave me told me to stay a few minutes."

"Pshaw! He could not live. The sooner dead the better for him; as well as for us. Did you mark how he eyed us when we carried away his wife and daughter? I never cried in my life, since I was knee-high, but curse me if I ever felt in better tune for the business than just then. Hey!" continued he, looking up, and observing me standing a few paces distant, and listening to their discourse; "what's wanted? Anybody dead?”

I stayed not to answer or parley, but hurried forward. My joints trembled, and cold drops stood on my forehead. I was ashamed of my own infirmity; and, by vigorous efforts of my reason, regained some degree of composure. The evening had now advanced, and it behooved me to procure accommodation at some of the inns.

These were easily distinguished by their signs, but many were without inhabitants. At length I lighted upon one, the hall of which was open and the windows lifted. After knocking for some

time, a young girl appeared, with many marks of distress. In an swer to my question, she answered that both her parents were sick, and that they could receive no one. I inquired, in vain, for any other tavern at which strangers might be accommodated. She knew of none such, and left me, on some one's calling to her from above, in the midst of my embarrassment. After a moment's pause, I returned, discomfited and perplexed, to the street.

I proceeded, in a considerable degree, at random. At length I reached a spacious building in Fourth Street, which the sign-post showed me to be an inn. I knocked loudly and often at the door. At length a female opened the window of the second story, and, in a tone of peevishness, demanded what I wanted. I told her that I wanted lodging.

"Go hunt for it somewhere else," said she; "you'll find none here." I began to expostulate; but she shut the window with quickness, and left me to my own reflections.

I began now to feel some regret at the journey I had taken. Never, in the depth of caverns or forests, was I equally conscious of loneliness. I was surrounded by the habitations of men; but I was destitute of associate or friend. I had money, but a horseshelter, or a morsel of food could not be purchased. I came for the purpose of relieving others, but stood in the utmost need myself. Even in health my condition was helpless and forlorn; but what would become of me should this fatal malady be contracted? To hope that an asylum would be afforded to a sick man, which was denied to one in health, was unreasonable.

[Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 1793, 1799-1800, chapter 15.]

DANIEL WEBSTER

[Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, N. H., Jan. 18, 1782. He was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and soon became prominent as an advocate and as an orator. He was elected to the lower house of Congress for the first time in 1813, and again in 1815 and 1823. In 1827 he entered the Senate, serving there until President Harrison appointed him Secretary of State in 1841. Resigning in 1843, after concluding the important Ashburton Treaty with England, he re-entered the Senate in 1845. In 1850, he was once more appointed Secretary of State by President Fillmore. He died at his home in Marshfield, Mass., Oct. 24, 1852. The standard edition of his works, the text of which is followed in this volume, is that of 1851. The best biography is that by George Ticknor Curtis.

DANIEL WEBSTER was beyond all question the greatest of American orators; in the opinion of many students of oratorical style, he pronounced at least one oration that surpasses any other recorded specimen of human eloquence. He was, indeed, peculiarly and uniquely fortunate both in his natural gifts and in the circumstances of his remarkable career. There have been orators like Burke, whose elocution was noble in diction and weighty in thought, yet whose impressiveness was marred by the speaker's own physical insignificance or by an imperfect delivery; there have been still others who, like Henry Clay, produced upon their immediate hearers an effect that was almost wholly due to charm of utterance and of manner; but very seldom has it been given to any one to unite, in perfect balance and proportion, the physical, the intellectual, and the emotional attributes that raise their possessor to the rank of a great master of eloquence.

Webster, however, had all the natural gifts and all the acquired graces that go to the endowment of the ideal orator. A man of stately presence, and with a face indicative of extraordinary power, his manner was at once easy and unaffected, yet stately and majestic. His intellectual gifts were no less striking,

a marvellous memory richly stored with facts and illustrations

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drawn from a large experience and the widest reading, a keenly active, vigorous, and logical mind that pierced through the outer shell of any question and touched at once its very core, an unfailing fund of common sense and perfect reasonableness, a tact and taste that never made rhetorical mistakes nor allowed him for a moment to go too far, and finally a persuasive human sympathy that imparted to his stateliest and most massive utterances a warmth and glow and color such as vivified them and made them speak to the emotions as well as to the intellect. His voice was wonderful in its range and quality. It carried his lightest words with perfect ease to the farthest limits of the vast audiences that heard him, and it had at once an exquisite beauty of tone and a sonorous organ-quality that, in the supreme moments of his oratory, was instinct with an indescribably thrilling power.

Webster was no less fortunate in the time and circumstances of his remarkable career. The period of our national history extending from the close of the War of 1812 to the year of his death was a period when the most vital issues were flung into the political arena. These issues involved the broadest questions of constitutional interpretation, and they touched alike the popular heart and the chords of conscience; so that both intellect and sentiment were aroused by their discussion, and the whole nation watched with the intensest eagerness the forensic battle that sprang out of them. The Senate of the United States was for forty years a battle-ground toward which every eye was turned to note each phase of the struggle and to judge each combatant; and hence all who contended there did so with a knowledge that whether they achieved success or failure the result would at once be recognized by their countrymen. And this knowledge, coupled with the importance of the issues that were at stake, made it inevitable that the very ablest statesmen, the foremost orators, and the most acute debaters should be pitted there against each other. Here again was Webster fortunate; for under different conditions the natural indolence of his temperament might never have been wholly cast aside, but might have been allowed to obscure and leave untested the tremendous powers that were slumbering beneath it. With antagonists whose intellectual gifts were almost equal to his own, and with the ardor of emulation always intensely