Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/68

Rh Webster should have forgotten an impressive phrase from Lord Bacon which he had quoted in his famous letter to the "Citizens on the Kennebec River":

"Among the maxims left us by Lord Bacon, one is, that when seditions or discontents arise in the state the part of wisdom is to remove, by all means possible, the causes. The surest way to prevent discontents, if the times will bear it," he says, "is to take away the matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire."

Slavery was that cause which should then and there have been removed.

But these great topics are beyond the meaning and the purpose of these rambling recollections. A young girl listening to a giant was not thinking of the past or the future; she was probably very much more interested in her own present.

But she was conscious of a great thud of disappointment, and was very angry when a beau of the period, Mr. Cabell, of Virginia, said to her: "Less than that concession of Mr. Webster would have dissolved the Union." Many years after in St. Louis, having suffered extensively from the evils of secession, Mr. Cabell talked to me in a very different strain.

Of the great we of the lesser type have a right to cherish all memories, however trivial; it therefore is to me, who saw this great man when I was a child, and afterwards when I was a young woman, a great pleasure to recall his smile, his careful dress, his commanding beauty, and his unvarying kindness. My memories of him in the Senate and in society are not less vivid and delightful than of the days at Marshfield. I saw him in the Capitol as he was sitting to Healy for one of his best portraits. He seemed perfect, and I ceased to