acres each; if he chose to keep two hundred prize cattle and seven hundred choice sheep for his pleasure; if he must have about his house lamas, deer, and all rare fowls; if his flower-garden must be one acre in extent, and his books worth thirty thousand dollars; if he found it pleasant to keep two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft; if he could not refrain from sending money in answer to begging letters, and pleased himself by giving away to his black man money enough to buy a very good house; and if he could not avoid adding wings and rooms to his spacious mansion at Marshfield, and must needs keep open house there and have a dozen, guests at a time,—­why should the solvent and careful business men of Boston have been taxed, or have taxed themselves, to pay any part of the expense?

Mr. Lanman, his secretary, gives us this curious and contradictory account of his pecuniary habits:—­

“He made money with ease, and spent it without reflection.  He had accounts with various banks, and men of all parties were always glad to accommodate him with loans, if he wanted them.  He kept no record of his deposits, unless it were on slips of paper hidden in his pockets; these matters were generally left with his secretary.  His notes were seldom or never regularly protested, and when they were, they caused him an immense deal of mental anxiety.  When the writer has sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thousand dollars, he has not even looked at it, but packed it away in his pockets, like so much waste paper.  During his long professional career, he earned money enough to make a dozen fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and gave it away to the poor by hundreds and thousands.  Begging letters from women and unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, at certain periods; and one instance is remembered where, on six successive days, he sent remittances of fifty and one hundred dollars to people with whom he was entirely unacquainted.  He was indeed careless, but strictly and religiously honest, in all his money matters.  He knew not how to be otherwise.  The last fee which he ever received for a single legal argument was $11,000....

“A sanctimonious lady once called upon Mr. Webster, in Washington, with a long and pitiful story about her misfortunes and poverty, and asked him for a donation of money to defray her expenses to her home in a Western city.  He listened with all the patience he could manage, expressed his surprise that she should have called upon him for money, simply because he was an officer of the government, and that, too, when she was a total stranger to him, reprimanded her in very plain language for her improper conduct, and handed her a note of fifty dollars.

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