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"This consumption of ministers," wrote Irving to Mr. Webster, "is appalling. To carry on a negotiation with such transient functionaries is like bargaining at the window of a railroad-car: before you can get a reply to a proposition the other party is out of sight." Apart from politics, Irving's residence was full of half-melancholy recollections and associations.
President Dwight of Yale found him "as full of resources as an egg is of meat"; and Daniel Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always talking, always acting." Mr. Prime thus sums up his character: "He was a man of genius, not content with what had been and was, but originating and with vast executive ability combining the elements to produce great results.
He spoke very gently, begging my pardon for the intrusion. Then Paul said: 'I have heard of your trouble, Miss Webster, and came to offer my sympathy and help. Father and I will be able to render you some assistance, as we know all the facts. Will you do us the honor to accept our aid in thwarting this unjust attempt to rob you of all means of support?
He was searched, and among other articles taken from him was a key some four or five inches long; it was the missing lavatory key. Whilst one of the officers withdrew to make out a mittimus, the Professor asked one of the others if they had found Dr. Parkman. The officer begged him not to question him. "You might tell me something about it," pleaded Webster. "Where did they find him?
"Yes, and she used to do the same for me before you shaved off your chin whiskers, Charlie," said Mr. Hatch gloomily. "How times have changed." "It ain't the times that's changed," said Margaret. "It's you men. You ain't what you used to be, lemme tell you that." "True, oh so true," lamented Mr. Webster. "I used to be nice and thin and graceful before you began showering me with attention.
His official dispatches, too, were very full and thorough. Webster valued them particularly, and remarked that he "always laid aside every other correspondence to read a diplomatic dispatch from Mr. Irving." He had time, too, for many charming chatty letters to the nieces at Sunnyside.
Her daughter could hold up Webster, and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage." He whistled softly. "If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars where does he get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to tell what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it."
He was the youngest of all the boys; but there was one girl who was younger than he. Daniel Webster was born on the 18th of January, 1782. He was a puny child, very slender and weak; and the neighbors were fond of telling his mother that he could not live long. Perhaps this was one of the things that caused him to be favored and petted by his parents.
In Boston, the question of life is the names of some eight or ten men. Have you seen Mr. Allston, Doctor Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. Greenough? Have you heard Everett, Garrison, Father Taylor, Theodore Parker? Have you talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, and Lacofrupees? Then you may as well die. In New York, the question is of some other eight, or ten, or twenty.
Such an historian might entirely disagree with the opinions of Webster; but he would certainly award to him the praise of being an honest reasoner and an honest rhetorician, in a time when reason was used merely as a tool of party passion, and when rhetoric rushed madly into the worst excesses of rhodomontade. It is also to be said that Webster rarely indulged in personalities.
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