Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/43

20 young, Miss Wilson," said he; "that is the remark of a coquette."

And at dinner he embarrassed me very much by repeating this conversation as a piece of youthful precocity.

Our drive was only too short, as we soon reached the long, low, pleasant white house known as Marshfield.

Mrs. Webster — a Miss Le Roy by birth — had very distinguished manners, and I felt awed as she received me every day with a lofty courtesy on the veranda.

The house was full of company. Judge Warren, a famous wit, was there. Mr. Webster laughed at everything he said. A great Whig demonstration had just taken place, and one man had put the flag in a sheaf of wheat as his part of the procession. "He didn't want things to go against the grain," said Judge Warren.

The dinner was profuse and excellent. Mr. Webster had dressed for it, and looked so grand in his blue coat and brass buttons that I was more and more afraid of him; but he grew more and more kind.

He offered a goose for the pièce de résistance, and carved it himself with great deftness. He afterwards whispered to me that he was afraid it would not go round.

Every day for a week he gave me the honor and pleasure of a drive, and every day the company changed. I liked him best in the mornings, when, with his soft hat on his head, he sat on the veranda with his dogs and his friends, talking, telling stories, and being the genial and magnetic host.

He of all men next to Wapoleon deserved the title of magnetic. His powerful face, so often described, so characterized by Carlyle, Macaulay, and Sydney Smith, was capable of the most lustrous and winning and beautiful smile I can remember. Had Mr. Webster been, like