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 a portion of the evidence.  At that time Webster was broken in health.  The most beautiful passage in his speech was his tribute to woman, and at another point he indulged in a very ludicrous description of the character of the first India rubber, which was offered as a marketable article.  He said:  “When India rubber was first brought to this country we had only the raw material, and they made overshoes and hats of it.  A present was sent to me of a complete suit of clothes made of this India rubber, and on a cold winter day I found my rubber overcoat was frozen as rigid as ice.  I took it out on my lawn, set it upright, put a broad brim hat on top of it, and there the figure stood erect, and my neighbors, as they passed by thought they saw the old farmer of Marshfield standing out under his trees.”  Some of his sarcastic attacks upon Mr. Day were very bitter, and when he showed his great, white teeth he looked like an enraged lion.

A few months after that Trenton speech in October, 1852, he went to his Marshfield home to die.  His spirits were broken and he was sore from political disappointments.  His last few days were spent in a fight by his powerful constitution against the inevitable.  The last time he walked feebly from his bed to his window he called out to his servant man:  “I want you to moor my yacht down there where I can see it from my window; then I want you to hoist the flag at the mast head, and every night to hang the lamp up in the rigging; when I go down I want to go down with my colors flying and my lamp burning.”  He told them to put on his monument, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.”  In the final moment he started up from his pillow long enough to say:  “I still live.”  He does live, and will ever live in the grateful memories of his countrymen.

While no one can deplore more than the writer the weaknesses and mistakes of Daniel Webster, yet when I remember his intellectual prowess and his magnificent services in defense of the Constitution, and the integrity of our national union, I am ready to say:  “Let us to all his failings and faults be charitably kind and only remember the glorious services he wrought to the country he loved.”