rated it until it is recognized as one of the
grandest passages in the English language. I take down my Webster and
read it occasionally, and it has in it the majestic "sound of many
waters." That great passage is the prelude of the mighty conflict which
thirty years afterwards was to be waged on the soil of Gettysburg and
Chickamauga. It became the condensed creed, and the battle-cry of the
long warfare for the nation's life. Well have there been placed in
golden letters on the pedestal of Webster's monument in Central Park the
last sublime line of that sentence: "Liberty and Union, now and forever:
one and inseparable." Mr. Webster's power in sarcastic invective was
terrific. After he had made his angry and ferocious rejoinder to the
charges of Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, the witty Dr.
Elder was asked, when he came out of the Senate chamber: "What did you
think of that speech?" Elder's reply was: "Thunder and lightning are
peaches and cream to such a speech as that." Mighty as Webster was in
intellectual power he had some lamentable weaknesses. He was indeed a
wonderful mixture of clay and iron. The iron was extraordinarily
massive, but the clay was loose and brittle. He had the temptations of
very strong animal passions, and sometimes to his intimate friends he
attempted to excuse some of his excesses of that kind. There has been
much controversy about Mr. Webster's habits in regard to intoxicants.
The simple truth is that during his visit to England in 1840 he was so
lionized and feted at public dinners that he brought home some convivial
habits which rather grew upon him in advancing years. On several public
occasions he gave evidence that he was somewhat under the influence of
deep potations. I once saw him when his imperial brain was raked with
the chain-shot of alcohol. The sight moved me to tears, and made me hate
more than ever the accursed drink that, like death, is no "respecter of
persons."

I heard the last speech that Mr. Webster ever made. It was a few months
before his death in 1852. The speech was delivered at Trenton, N.J., in
the celebrated India rubber case, Goodyear _vs. _ Day, in which Webster
was the leading counsel for Goodyear, and Rufus Choate headed the list
of eloquent advocates in defense of Mr. Day. In that speech Webster was
physically feeble, so that after speaking an hour, he was obliged to sit
down for a time, while Mr. James T. Brady made a new statement with
regard to