In personal appearance Prentiss was eminently handsome, and yet eminently manly.  Although of medium height, there was that in the carriage of his head that was astonishingly impressive.  I shall never forget him on one occasion, “in ’44,” when he rose at a public meeting to reply to an antagonist worthy of his steel.  His whole soul was roused, his high smooth forehead fairly coruscated.  He remained silent for some seconds, and only looked.  The bald eagle never glanced so fiercely from his eyry.  It seemed as if his deep blue eye would distend until it swallowed up the thousands of his audience.  For an instant the effect was painful; he saw it and smiled, when a cheer burst from the admiring multitude that fairly shook the earth.

His voice was clear and sweet, and could be heard at an immense distance, and yet, to be all like Demosthenes, he had a perceptible impediment in his speech.  As a reader he had no superior.  His narration was clear and unadorned, proper sentences were subduedly humorous, but the impressive parts were delivered with an effect that reminded me of the elder Kean.

His imagination was unsurpassed, and the rich stores of his mind supplied him with never-ending material, quoted and original.  The slightest allusion to anything gave him the key to all its peculiarities if he had occasion to allude to the diamond, its bed in the Golconda, its discovery by some poor native, its being associated with commerce, its polish by the lapidary, its adorning the neck of beauty, its rays brilliant and serene, its birth, its life, its history, all flashed upon him.  So with every idea in the vast storehouse of his mind.  He seemed to know all things, in mass and in particulars, never confused, never at a loss—­the hearer listened, wondered, and dreamed.  Thoughts of moment came forth as demanded, but ten thousand other thoughts rare and beautiful, continued to bubble up, after all effort ceased.

No man had a more delicate or subtle wit than Prentiss, or a more Falstaffian humor when it suited his purpose.  Who will ever forget the spending of a social dinner hour with him, when his health was high and his mind at ease?  Who so lovely?—­who so refined?  What delight was exhibited by sweet ladies who listened to his words!  Who could so eloquently discourse of roses and buds, of lilies and pearls, of eyes and graces, of robes and angels, and yet never offend the most sensitive of the sex, or call other than the blush of pleasure and joy to the cheek?  Who could, on the “public day,” ascend so gracefully from the associations of tariffs, and banks, and cotton, and sugar, to greet the fair ladies that honored him with their presence?  How he would lean toward them, as he dwelt upon “the blessed of all God’s handiwork,” compared their bright eyes to “day-stars” that lit up the dark recesses of his own clouded imagination; and how he would revel, like another Puck, among the rays and beams of smiles called forth by his own happy