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miscellaneous writings he displayed his practical philosophy and philanthropy. He wrote frequently upon banks and banking; his "Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases" is pronounced by an authority to have great historical value; he was one of the founders of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in the numerous list of his writings one comes upon such oddly assorted subjects as an account of a tornado in Wethersfield, a cure for cancer, upon white-washing, the mental arithmetic of a negro, on winds, upon female education, on the decomposition of white-lead paint, a dissertation on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, upon names of streets in New York, on yellow fever, on the age of literary men, and one article with the suggestive title "Number of Deaths in the Episcopal Church in New York in each Month for Ten Years." He had a passion for statistics which took an odd turn. In his diary one constantly finds an enumeration of the houses in the town which he happens to be visiting. "During his brief residence in New York," says one biographical sketch, "Mr. Webster numbered the houses in the city, and found that they were thirty-five hundred." He would count up one side of a street and down the other, and place the results in his note-book. I think he published in some paper the record of this individual census as applied to a number of houses and villages. There must have been in his constitution an inordinate love of detail, intensified, perhaps, by much contemplation of those battalions of words which make his spelling-book pages look like spiritual armies marching against ignorance. We have already observed Webster's interest in political discussion, and have tried to disclose something of his temper when viewing questions of public policy. "The Prompter" was written with reference to the conduct of life in individuals, but, as in the paper copied above, there is constant regard to the American character, and to the manner in which one should conduct himself in the new conditions of American life. The general subject of Americanism was one upon which he was constantly writing. We shall see later the length to which he carried his views in relation to the American language; here we may note some of the directions which his thought took when dealing with what may be called the greater morals of national life. In his "Remarks on the Manners, Government, and Debt of the United States," an odd combin
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