Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1882 — Anecdotes of Webster. [ARTICLE]

Anecdotes of Webster.

Harper for February i , ; I accompanied Mr. Webster to Annapolis to inform him of the facts of the case he was about to argue. But these Were by no means the main topics of our conversation. It was abt until the day before the hearing that he seemed to address hiinself seriously to the work of preparation. He then shut himself up in his room for the 1 entire morning, coming occasionally into mine to ask about some question of fact, bringing half-sheets of common blue letter paper, on which, ,he would say, be had been making “scratches.” They were distinct propositions, text ratherjthan arguments, carefully studed, and, as was apparent from erasures and iuterlining, labored. with a view to condensation, or to satisfy a fastidous judgement Once, when, I expressed a doubt whether one of his propositions was in accordacne with certain facts,Mr Webster drewbis pen through it, saying. “80, then, that cock won’t fight.” The notes thus prepared were the brief of his argument, and he spoke from them. That the glimpses thus afforded of the workings ol a&ieat intel lect, were extremely interesting may readily be imagined. But if the case did not engross us a all times, conversation did ! not flag. Our pleasantest talks were after dinner,' when we came back from the bar mess-room. Mr. Webster would then put on his slippers and tilt', hack his chair, with his feet against the side of the mantel piece, on a level with his head, saying. “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” and go off’into a stream of anecdotes, quotations, incidents of his early life and matters and things generally.' On these occasions Shakspear was a favorite topie, and his familiarity with it was testified by the aptness and frequency of his quotations. --‘..i

In one of these protracted talks, which always ran late into the night, Mr. Webster detailed the circumstances of his refusal to accept the clerkship oj a County Court, as they are related in Curtis, when the salary would have been a little fortune, and amused himself with a humorous comparison between his subsequent career and what would then have been his destiny. On the same occasion he described his early practice in New Hampshire, and told with almost boyish glee of of overtaking, one bright moonlight night, a timber sled at the foot of a hill hill on which the snow lay deep. The driver had gone to a tavern ahead for an extra horse,and Mr. Webster,hitching his own horse as an addition to the team, got the load to the summit, where the teamster presently found it. “I had hidden behind a tree,” said the narrator, “where I enjoyed the fun, and only came forth to stay the hand of the owner of the sled, who was ‘larruping’ his horses, because the ‘tarnal critters’ had put him to the expense of hiring assistance, when they were able to do the work and only refused their load to spite him.” It was Mr. Webster's way of telling the story,“and his imitation of the driver’s tone and manner, that enhanced the drollery of the incident. Upon another occasion he gave an amusing account of his escape through the ack window of an old-fashioned, stage coach when the horses were running away with it, and described the amazement of the driver, after they were stopped, when he found a Member of Congress standing on the baggage rack, and playing footman to a stage driver. The interest of these anecdotes was not so much in their matter as in the evidence they afford that neither the wear and tear of political and Drofessional life nor distinguished position had impaired the freshness of early youth.

Another of Mr. Webster’s anecdotes I have often repeated to students in my law office. It was the inflexible rule of Theophilus Parsons to give no law advice on Sunday—& rule which he persisted in adhering to when a citizen came to Salem on that day from Boston to obtain an opinion on a matter of first importance in connection with business to be transacted early Monday. Angry at having had his journey for nothing, the client was on his way to his carriage when Mr. Parsons followed him and asked whether he had made up his mind as to what was right according to the golden rule,and being answered in the Affirmative, told him to go back to Boston, do what he believed was “just right,” and when Mr. Parsons got to his office laler on Monday, he had no doubt he would fiml law enough to sustain him. Speaking, on another occasion,about the elements of success in professional life, Mr. Webster said: “Why, there islaborious man, and in all the relation of life absolutely unexceptionable, and yet, confound the fellowJ he never produces results.” The age of some one being mentioned one evening, Mr,* Webster saidr “The worst standard by which to measure a man’s life is the parish clerk’s register. Some men, sir, are born old* others, again, never grow old; ’ and certainly, when I listened to his flow of animated talk, the gleefulness|of many of his remarks about men and things, I fully appreciated his meaning—that it was the temperament of the man, and not the number of hi» years, that made him old or young.