r nature. "It is,"
says Mr. Beveridge, "the most marked characteristic of his entire
private life and is the one thing which differentiates him sharply from
the most eminent men of that heroic but socially free-and-easy period."
From his association with his wife Marshall derived, moreover, an
opinion of the sex "as the friends, the companions, and the equals
of man" which may be said to have furnished one of his few points of
sympathetic contact with American political radicalism in his later
years. The satirist of woman, says Story, "found no sympathy in his
bosom," and "he was still farther above the commonplace flatteries by
which frivolity seeks to administer aliment to personal vanity, or vice
to make its approaches for baser purposes. He spoke to the sex when
present, as he spoke of them when absent, in language of just appeal to
their understandings, their tastes, and their duties."

Marshall's relations with his neighbors were the happiest possible.
Every week, when his judicial duties permitted or the more "laborious
relaxation" of directing his farm did not call him away, he attended the
meetings of the Barbecue Club in a fine grove just outside the city,
to indulge in his favorite diversion of quoits. The Club consisted of
thirty of the most prominent men of Richmond, judges, lawyers, doctors,
clergymen, and merchants. To quoits was added the inducement of an
excellent repast of which roast pig was the piece de resistance. Then
followed a dessert of fruit and melons, while throughout a generous
stock of porter, toddy, and of punch "from which water was carefully
excluded," was always available to relieve thirst. An entertaining
account of a meeting of the Club at which Marshall and his friend
Wickham were the caterers has been thus preserved for us:

"At the table Marshall announced that at the last meeting two members
had introduced politics, a forbidden subject, and had been fined a
basket of champagne, and that this was now produced, as a warning to
evil-doers; as the club seldom drank this article, they had no champagne
glasses, and must drink it in tumblers. Those who played quoits retired
after a while for a game. Most of the members had smooth, highly
polished brass quoits. But Marshall's were large, rough, heavy, and
of iron, such as few of the members could throw well from hub to hub.
Marshall himself threw them with great success and accuracy, and often
'rang the meg.' On this occasion Marshall an