52, of which I was a
member, I heard this story told by his secretary. In the evening,
when Mr. Webster was at his well-known residence on Louisiana
Avenue, near Sixth street, he was awaiting the ballots in the
convention. When it came by the telegraph, "Scott 159, Fillmore
112, Webster 21," he repeated it in his deep tones and said: "How
will this read in history?" He did not like either Scott or
Fillmore, and was disappointed in the votes of southern members.
To be third in such a contest wounded his pride. He died before
the year closed. He was, perhaps, the greatest man of intellectual
force of his time, but he had faults which the people could not
overlook. Another incident about Mr. Webster, and the house in
which he lived, may not be without interest. On New Year's day of
1860, Mr. Corwin, Mr. Colfax and myself made the usual calls
together. Among the many visits we made, was one on a gentleman
then living in that house. As we entered, Mr. Corwin met an old
well-trained negro servant who had been a servant of Mr. Webster
in this house. I noticed that Mr. Corwin lost his usual gayety,
and as we left the house he turned to us, and, with deep emotion,
asked that we leave him at his lodgings, that his long associations
with Mr. Webster, especially his meetings with him in that house
during their association as members of the cabinet of Fillmore,
unfitted him to enjoy the usual greetings of the day. I felt that
the emotion of such a man as Corwin was the highest possible
compliment to the memory of Daniel Webster.

From Boston I returned to New York. There, in the families of two
brothers of my mother, both then living, I had a glimpse of New
York society. With Mr. Scott, the son-in-law of my uncle, James
Hoyt, I made nearly one hundred of the usual New Years' visits, then
customary in New York. This custom I am told has been abandoned,
but the New York of to-day is quite different from the New York of
1847. It still retained some of the knickerbocker customs of the
olden time. The site of the Fifth Avenue Hotel was then a stone-
yard where grave stones were cut. All north of Twenty-third street,
now the seat of plutocracy, was then sparsely occupied by poor
houses and miserable shanties, and the site of Central Park was a
rough, but picturesque body of woodland, glens and rocky hills,
with a few clearings partly cultivated. Even then the population
of New York was about 400,000, or more than thre