Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/258

 Daniel Webster. days as thin, dark and pale, so different from his manhood appearance. He slept in the same room with him the first night young Webster spent in Hanover. He de nied emphatically the oft-repeated stories that Webster was an idle student and tore up his diploma. He was not the first scholar in his class, but it is certain that he gave promise of his future eminence. Remarkable as were his powers, his in dustry and application developed them to the utmost. He could concentrate all his faculties on a given subject, and he would never undertake difficult work when he was tired. He was an early riser, and labored early in the day, when mind and body were fresh. He stated once that, while Secretary of State, he rose every morning and shaved himself by candle-light. His competition with Jeremiah Mason, at the Rockingham County Bar, sharpened him as nothing else could have done. He had great admiration for this lawyer, and the story is well-known that when he learned that the celebrated William Wirt was to be his antagonist in a case in Boston, he re marked, " I was afraid it would be Jeremiah Mason." When he began practice, Parker Noyes was the most learned lawyer at the Merrimac County Bar, and knowing but little law himself, yet having an opinion of what the law ought to be, he would go to Mr. Noyes and state his point, and ask where the cases could be found sustaining it. The late Judge Tenney, of Maine, told me that Mr. Webster, when at Portsmouth, heard one of Mr. Mason's students say that the "old man" had been much puzzled over a particular law difficulty, but had settled it. Mr. Webster inquired what it was, and what was, Mr. Mason's solution, and did not for get it. A few years after, in New York, Aaron Burr, one of the ablest lawyers of his time, applied to Mr. Webster for his opinion on this very question, and was surprised to hear his ready answer, that of Mr. Mason.

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DANIEL WEBSTER AT 22. (From a miniature on ivory.)

His retentive memory, termed by Mr, Choate "one of his most extraordinary fac ulties," never lost information once gained. He was ever thinking, studying, preparing for questions that might arise. He had no time to make special preparation for the Hayne speech, the most celebrated ever de livered in Congress, but he was prepared. It is said that some of the sentences that have become so noted had been elaborated in his mind for years before the occasion arose to use them, like the one so often quoted on the power of England, " whose morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." It does not seem possible that he could have uttered that passage on the power of con science from his speech at the Knapp trial without previous preparation. Towards the close of his life especially, Mr. Webster was often dull and heavy, dis appointing expectation. It was only when aroused that he was eloquent, while Choate