This gives me great pain.  Mr. Parker Noyes and myself have been fast friends for near a half century.  I have known his wife also from a time before her marriage, and have always felt a warm regard for her, and much respect for her connexions in Newburyport.  Mr. Horace Noyes and his wife I have long known.  Her grandfather, Major Nathan Taylor, late of Sanbornton, was an especial friend of my father, and I learned to love everybody upon whom he set his Stamp.

These families during many years have been my most intimate friends and neighbors whenever I have been in Franklin.  It would wound me exceedingly if any thing as a Lawsuit should now occur between Mother and Son.  It would very much destroy my interest in the families, and whatever might be the result, it could not but cast some degree of reflection upon the memory of Parker Noyes.  I know nothing of the circumstances except what I learn from Mr. John Taylor, and I do not wish to express any judgement of my own as to what ought to be done, at least without more full information, but I do think it a case for Christian Intercession.  And the particular object of this Letter is to invite your attention, and that of the members of the Church, to it in this aspect.  Mr. Noyes is understood to have left a very pretty property, but a controversy about his Will would very likely absorb one half of it.  My end is accomplished, my dear Sir, when I have made these Suggestions to you.  You will give them such consideration, as you think they deserve.  It has given me pleasure to hope that I might write half a dozen pages respecting Mr. Parker Noyes, and our long friendship, but I could have no heart for this if a family feud after his death was to come in, and overwhelm all pleasant recollections.

     I dictate this letter to my clerk, as the state of my eyes preclude
     me from writing much with my own hand.

     Yours with sincere regard,

     DAN’L.  Webster. 
     Rev.  Mr. Savage
     Franklin, N.H.”

This interesting letter produced the happy effect of reconciling the contending parties, and bringing about an honorable and satisfactory settlement of all difficulties between them.  The letter was timely, bringing healing in its wings.  Here were “words fitly spoken, like apples of gold in pictures of silver;” to the parties it soon was the voice from the dead, “proclaiming peace on earth, and good will towards men.”  As adviser and counsel of the mother, my own exertions for peace had proved impotent, but the letter of the eminent dying statesman, containing the salutary advice of an old friend, proved irresistible in its influence, and brought to the troubled waters immediate quiet, without resort to the Church or other legal tribunal.