by the largeness and elegance of the residences there, and
wonder how such establishments can be maintained in a place that has
little "visible means of support." It was while Portsmouth was an
important seaport that Daniel Webster learned and practised law there,
and acquired some note as a Federalist politician.

The once celebrated Dr. Buckminster was the minister of the
Congregational church at Portsmouth then. One Sunday morning in 1808,
his eldest daughter sitting alone in the minister's pew, a strange
gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance and demeanor strongly
arrested her attention. The slenderness of his frame, the pale yellow
of his complexion, and the raven blackness of his hair, seemed only to
bring out into grander relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the
effect of his deep-set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life
there was an air of delicacy and refinement about his face, joined to
a kind of strength that women can admire, without fearing. Miss
Buckminster told the family, when she went home from church, that
there had been a remarkable person with her in the pew,--one that she
was sure had "a marked character for good or evil." A few days after,
the remarkable person came to live in the neighborhood, and was soon
introduced to the minister's family as Mr. Daniel Webster, from
Franklin, New Hampshire, who was about to open a law office in
Portsmouth. He soon endeared himself to every person in the minister's
circle, and to no one more than to the minister himself, who, among
other services, taught him the art of preserving his health. The young
man, like the old clergyman, was an early riser, up with the dawn in
summer, and long before the dawn in winter; and both were out of doors
with the sun, each at one end of a long saw, cutting wood for an
appetite. The joyous, uncouth singing and shouting of the newcomer
aroused the late sleepers. Then in to breakfast, where the homely,
captivating humor of the young lawyer kept the table in a roar, and
detained every inmate. "Never was there such an actor lost to the
stage," Jeremiah Mason, his only rival at the New Hampshire bar, used
to say, "as he would have made." Returning in the afternoon from
court, fatigued and languid, his spirits rose again with food and
rest, and the evening was another festival of conversation and
reading. A few months after his settlement at Portsmouth he visited
his native hills, saying nothing respecting the obj