nt of
eloquence seldom equalled, and in which he clearly indicated the chagrin
that even a great man may feel when he is made the subject of unjust
suspicion and criticism.

While I have no claim whatever to be regarded as one of the great
statesman's associates, I was favored with a very limited and casual
acquaintance in the latter part of his life, and an opportunity to know
something of his private life and his religious character, through his
particular friends, of whom a few were also my personal friends. I may
perhaps, therefore, properly speak of unquestionable facts which have,
by force of circumstances, come to my knowledge at different times
through a period of about forty years, tending to disprove the base
rumor and slanders which have found an astonishing currency.

To these I never thought it proper to refer publicly, until the pages of
one of our most respectable periodicals[B] reproduced the rumors, which
were subsequently publicly refuted in the Boston _Herald_, by Mr.
Webster's able biographer, George Ticknor Curtis. The friends of Mr.
Webster would have been false to his memory and their own moral
obligation had they failed to put forward the evidence in their
possession to disprove the charges on which such rumors were fabricated,
and which, until a few years ago, had not found a place, so far as I
know, in any respectable publication.

The late Dr. John Jeffries, who was the physician of Mr. Webster, was
also my family physician for twenty years. Not long after the close of
the late civil war, an Episcopal clergyman of Charleston, S.C., became
my guest. He being in need of medical advice, I introduced him to Dr.
Jeffries. After his case had been disposed of he inquired of Dr.
Jeffries: "Pray, sir, were the stories which we hear at the South
concerning Mr. Webster's private character true?" The doctor replied:
"Do you refer to his alleged drinking habits?"--"Yes, sir," said the
clergyman. "No, sir," answered Dr. Jeffries; "they were not true." He
added: "I was his physician for many years, and made the _post-mortem_
examination. He died from no such cause." To illustrate to what extent
Mr. Webster was misunderstood and consequently maligned, the doctor
related the following fact: "On a certain occasion when Mr. Webster was
engaged to speak in Faneuil Hall, he had been for several days much
reduced by medical treatment. Late in the afternoon I suggested that, in
his reduced condition, a glass of w