The Last Leaf | Page 5

whom the crowd espied in the gallery
and summoned clamorously. My mood was serious, and it jarred upon
me when a classmate, building on current rumours, speculated
irreverently as to the probable contents of the pitcher on Mr. Webster's
desk. He came at last, tumultuously accompanied and received, and
advanced to the front, his large frame, if I remember right, dressed in
the blue coat with brass buttons and buff vest usual to him on public
occasions, which hung loosely about the attenuated limbs and body.
The face had all the majesty I expected, the dome above, the deep eyes
looking from the caverns, the strong nose and chin, but it was the front
of a dying lion. His colour was heavily sallow, and he walked with a
slow, uncertain step. His low, deep intonations conveyed a solemn
suggestion of the sepulchre. His speech was brief, a recognition of the
honour shown him, an expression of his belief that the policy he had
advocated and followed was necessary to the country's preservation.
Then he passed out to Marshfield and the death-bed. What he said was
not much, but it made a strange impression of power, and here I am
minded to tell an ancient story. Sixty years ago, when I was ensconced
in my smug youth, and could "sit and grin," like young Dr. Holmes, at
the queernesses of the last leaves of those days, I heard a totterer whose
ground was the early decades of the last century, chirp as follows:
"This Daniel Webster of yours! Why, I can remember when he had a
hard push to have his ability acknowledged. We used to aver that he
never said anything, and that it was only his big way that carried the
crowd. I have in mind an old-time report of one of his deliverances: 'Mr.
Chairman (_applause_), I did not graduate at this university (_greater

applause_), at this college (_tumultuous applause_), I graduated at
another college (_wild cheering with hats thrown in the air_), I
graduated at a college of my native State (_convulsions of enthusiasm,
during which the police spread mattresses to catch those who leaped
from the windows_).'"
That day in Faneuil Hall I felt his "big way" and it overpowered,
though the sentences were really few and commonplace. What must he
have been in his prime! What sentences in the whole history of oratory
have more swayed men than those he uttered! I recall that in 1861 we
young men of the North did not much argue the question of the right of
secession. The Constitution was obscure about it, and one easily
became befogged if he sought to weigh the right and the wrong of it.
But Webster had replied to Hayne. Those were the days when
schoolboys "spoke pieces," and in thousands of schoolhouses the
favourite piece was his matchless peroration. From its opening, "When
my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in the
heavens," to the final outburst, "Liberty and Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable!" it was all as familiar to us as the sentences of the
Lord's Prayer, and scarcely less consecrated. No logical unravelling of
the tangle, but that burning expression of devotion to the Union, lay
behind the enthusiasm with which we sprang to arms. The ghost of
Webster hovered in the battle-smoke, and it was his call more than any
other that rallied and kept us at the firing-line.
I think my mother told me once that on the canal-boat as we went West
in the thirties, we had Webster for a time as a fellow-passenger, who
good-naturedly patted the heads of the two little boys who then made
up her brood. I wish I could be sure that the hand of Webster had once
rested on my head. His early utterances as to slavery are warm with
humane feeling. I have come to feel that his humanity did not cool, but
he grew into the belief that agitation at the time would make sure the
destruction of the country, in his eyes the supreme calamity. The
injustice, hoary from antiquity, not recognised as injustice until within
a generation or two, might wait a generation or two longer before we
dealt with it. Let the evil be endured a while that the greater evil might
not come. I neither defend nor denounce him. I am now only

remembering; and what a stately and solemn image it is to remember!
* * * * *
William H. Seward, unlike Webster, had the handicap of an
unimpressive exterior, nor had his voice the profound and conquering
note which is so potent an ally of the mind in subduing men. I heard
Seward's oration at Plymouth in 1855, a worthy effort which may be
read in