On the seventeenth of June, 1843, Fletcher Webster witnessed the laying of the capstone of the monument on Bunker Hill, and listened, with affectionate interest, to the oration which was then delivered by his father,—­an oration which, if inferior to that delivered at the laying of the cornerstone, was nevertheless every way worthy of the man and the occasion,—­simple, massive, and splendid.  A few weeks later, he sailed from Boston for China, and watched, as he tells us, “while light and eyesight lasted, till the summit of that monument faded, at last, from view.”  Many a departing, many a returning, sailor and traveler, has given his “last, long, lingering look” to that towering obelisk, but none with deeper feeling than Fletcher Webster.

As secretary to Commissioner Cushing, he assisted in negotiating the first treaty between the United States and China, which involved an absence of eighteen months from the United States.  Neither the outward nor the homeward voyage was made in company with Mr. Cushing.  Mr. Webster left Boston, August 8, 1843, in the brig Antelope, built by Captain R.B.  Forbes, touched at Bombay, November 12, 1843, and arrived at Canton, February 4, 1844.  He returned in the ship Paul Jones, in January, 1845, the voyage from Canton to New York being made in one hundred and eleven days.  It deserves to be stated, as illustrating the admiration with which the merchant princes of Boston regarded Daniel Webster, that the house of Russell and Company, which owned both the Antelope and the Paul Jones, refused to accept any passage-money from his son, who was entertained, not as a passenger, but as an honored guest.

By his voyage to China and by his experiences there, Mr. Webster, acquired, not only rich stores of curious information and a great enlargement of his intellectual horizon, but—­what is particularly to be noted—­a better appreciation of the splendid destiny of his native land.  Unlike many foolish Americans, who waste their time in foreign capitals, he never harbored the slightest regret that he had not been born something other than an American; he never desired to be anything but a free citizen of the great republic of the West.

He prepared a lecture on China, which he delivered in many of the cities and large towns.  Mr. Cushing had already entered the lecture field with a discourse on China, and some thought Mr. Webster presumptuous in thus inviting comparison between his own discourse and Mr. Cushing’s.  But competent critics, who heard both these efforts, expressed a preference for that of Mr. Webster.  Vast as was Mr. Cushing’s learning, his oratorical style was never one of the best; while Fletcher Webster’s style, for clearness, simplicity, strength, and majesty, was little inferior to that of his illustrious father.  He afterward expanded this lecture to the dimensions of a book, but never published it; and, in 1878, this manuscript, and all others left by him, perished by the fire which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield.  One of the few scraps which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his father’s horse, Steamboat,—­a horse of great speed and endurance,—­and which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven.  In English, it ran thus:  “Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou stops here.”