tirely.

On an occasion well remembered, though the "chiel takin' notes" was but
a simple child, I myself was present when the grim, moody reticence of
the great orator converted fully twoscore ardent admirers into personal
foes.

During the summer of 1837, Mr. Webster, in pursuit of a Presidential
nomination, executed his famous tour through the Great West, at that
time embracing only the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois. The first infant railway of the continent being yet in
swaddling-clothes, the journey was accomplished by private conveyance,
and the bumps and bruises stoically endured in probing bottomless pits
of prairie-mud, diversified by joltings over rude log-ways and intrusive
stumps, were but a part of the cruel price paid for a glittering prize
which in the end vanished before the aspirant like fairy gold. At
stations within reach of their personal influence, local politicians
flew to the side of the brilliant statesman with the beautiful fidelity
of steel to magnet: hence he was environed by a self-appointed escort of
obsequious men, constantly changing as he progressed.

"Our member" spared neither whip nor spur, and joined the triumphal
march at Chicago. Mr. Webster was then on the home-stretch, and it was
shortly after this date that the incident I describe occurred. It was a
time of wild Western speculation; towns and cities sprung into being as
buoyantly as soap-bubbles, and often proved as perishing. Major Morse
was president of a company which, perceiving a promising site for harbor
and town on the shore of Michigan, where yet the Indian charmed the
deer, secured a tract of land and proceeded to lay out an inviting town
of--corner-lots. The major's family occupied temporarily a wide log
house, with a rough "lean-to" of bright pine boards freshly cut at the
mill below. Outside, the dwelling was merely a hut of primitive pattern
nestling under the shade of a tall tree; inside, it presented a large
room divided by curtains into cooking-and sleeping-apartments,
surmounted by a stifling loft reached by the rungs of a permanent
perpendicular ladder. Savory odors of wild fowl and venison daily
drifted up the charred throat of its clay-daubed chimney, and by the
same route, whenever the rolling smoke permitted, children sitting about
the hearth took observations of the clouds and heavenly bodies,
according to the time of day. A narrow passage cut through the heart of
the old logs led into