akfast table of
family and friends, "my day's work is done--I have nothing to do but
fish."

Although this is, indeed, his favorite sport, and there is hardly a
brook or lake or pond within a radius of twenty miles which does not
bear the charmed legend of having been one of his favorite fishing
grounds, he does not spend his days in amusement, like the typical
country gentleman. Farming to him, the son of a yeoman, is no mere
possession of a fine estate, but the actual participation in ploughing,
planting, and haying. His full animal spirits find relief in such labor.
We cannot think of any similar example of such prodigious mental and
physical energy. Macaulay was a great parliamentary orator, but he was
the most conventional of city men; Burke and Chatham had no strength for
such strenuousness after their professional toil. But Webster loved to
know and to put his hand to every detail of farming and stock-raising.
When he first came to Marshfield the soil was thin and sandy. It was he
who instituted scientific farming in the region, teaching the natives
how to fertilize with kelp which was easily obtainable from the sea, and
also with the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the
proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love
of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind
drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental
principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antaeus,
seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire
land--he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his
death--and to cultivate it to the highest possible degree of
productiveness was his intense delight. The farm which he purchased from
Captain Thomas grew to an estate of two or three dozen buildings,
outhouses, tenant houses, a dairyman's cottage, fisherman's house,
agricultural offices, and several large barns. We can imagine that he
shows us all of these things--explaining every detail with enthusiasm
and accuracy, occasionally digressing upon the habits of birds or fish,
the influence of tides and currents, the changes of sky and wind. All
natural laws are fascinating to him--inspiring his imagination and
uplifting his spirit--and it is these things, never politics or
business, which he discusses in his hours of freedom. He himself
supervises the planting and harvesting and slaughtering here and on his
other