Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
The desert and illimitable air, —

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart:

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

il lim'i ta ble, boundless; having no limits.

DANIEL WEBSTER

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

It happened to the writer, when hardly more than a boy, to be sent upon an errand to an office in a building on State Street in Boston, where eight or ten clerks were hard at work. One of them, getting up for some purpose and passing a window, suddenly remarked, "There's Daniel Webster." In an instant every desk was deserted and every window occupied. I naturally went with the rest and had to climb into a chair to look over their heads.

Looking out, I saw that every window in the opposite building was equally crowded and everybody was looking in one direction. Following their gaze, I saw a man of rustic appearance, massive body, and large head, whom I had never seen before, and who stood alone at the corner of the street, looking across to the other side. He had a complexion as dark as an Indian's, with coal-black eyes and heavy brows surmounted by a somewhat battered beaver hat. He paid no attention to any one, though all of the people in passing glanced shyly up at him. Probably he was waiting for some companion, perhaps expecting to go on a fishing excursion, a diversion of which he was very fond. This was Daniel Webster, as I first saw him the orator and the interpreter of the Constitution.

Some weeks later, at the house of a relative in Brookline, I was called upon to offer the sugar-bowl to Daniel Webster, who was just accepting a cup of tea, and I have never forgotten the bright smile with which he received my humble offering. He was a man so famous that Ì am afraid I was led to mention that little honor until my friends became quite tired of it.

Once again, in a public gathering of Harvard graduates, when Edward Everett, a famous orator, was giving an address to an audience, there came a burst of applause, and the orator looked pleased and bowed; but when the applause went on, and people all looked and pointed toward the platform behind him, Mr. Everett turned and saw the massive form of Daniel Webster coming upon the stage. Mr. Everett bowed gracefully and said, "Tell us, sir, you who know more of the subject than any one else, whether what I am saying is not true"; and Mr. Webster bowed his fine head, though he probably had not discovered what Mr. Everett was talking about. This was the last time I ever saw him.

Daniel Webster was born January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, a small town set in the midst of rugged rocks and unfertile soil, above the winding Merrimac River. His father, Ebenezer Webster, a yeoman born and bred, had a creditable military career; he served in the old French war and the Revolutionary war, but found it hard to provide for his growing family in time of peace.

Daniel worked on the farm in his boyhood, but he early showed a love of books. He attended the district schools; then at the age of thirteen he entered Phillips Academy, Exeter, and at fifteen, Dartmouth College. After his graduation he began the study of law, but finding that his elder brother, Ezekiel, was eager for a college education, he generously interrupted his law work to teach school in what is now Fryeburg, Maine, in order that he might help his brother by his earnings. In 1805 he came to Boston and resumed his law studies in the office of the famous Christopher Gore, afterward governor of Massachusetts. From that time he rose steadily to a position of dignity and fame.

We know something of Mr. Webster's first appearance at the bar through another brilliant New Hampshire man, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, who wrote about it in his usual odd and lively style. "He was singular in his look. He and his brother Zeke used to come together to court, after a year or two. I can see them now, driving into that little village in their bellows-top chaise-top thrown back — driving like Jehu, the chaise bending under them like a close-top [meaning probably a close-reefed topsail] in a high wind. Daniel used to drive very fast. They would come in as if they had started long before day; and it was a sight in a small place to see those two ride in together. I could have told either of them thirty miles among a thousand men."

The same writer says elsewhere of Webster's first law case: "It was a small case and the only one he had. He wanted to get it put by. The lawyer on the other side was opposed to this, and Daniel got up and made a speech that made the little old house ring again. They all said — lawyers, judges, and people - that they never heard such a speech or anything like it. They said he talked .like a different creature from any of the rest of them, great or small; and there were men there that were not small."

He describes Webster's appearance thus: "He was a black, raven-haired fellow, with an eye as black as death, and as heavy as a lion's - and no lion in Africa ever had a voice like his; and his look was like a lion's that same heavy look, not sleepy, but as if he didn't care about anything that was going on about him or anything anywhere else. He didn't look as if he was thinking about anything; but as if he would think like a hurricane if he once got waked up to it. They say that a lion looks so when he is quiet."

It has always seemed to me that all the other descriptions I have ever seen of Webster's personal look and bearing were not to be compared with this. Next to it comes, perhaps, the brief description of him said to have been given by the celebrated author, Thomas Carlyle, who called him “a steam-engine in breeches."

In May, 1813, he took his seat in the United States House of Representatives from the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, district, and so began his public service. From that time to 1841, when he became Secretary of State under President Harrison, there were but few years when he did not hold some position of public importance under the United States government. He was again Secretary of State under President Fillmore, and remained in this position up to the time of his death.

Much of Mr. Webster's later success at the bar and in the Senate was due to his early habits of careful study. In the law case which made his reputation, the "Dartmouth College" case, and in his most famous speech in the Senate (the reply to Mr. Hayne of South Carolina), he used as he himself said afterward facts and notes which he had collected long before, on some cases of much less importance, and which he had tucked away in a pigeon-hole, thinking they might yet be useful.

In one instance, however, his preparations for the Dartmouth case did but little to help him. While getting ready for it, he told the President of the college that, as the issue turned partly on the fact that Lord Dartmouth had endowed the institution expressly to teach Indians, they had better, if possible, have an Indian or two among the students. There had been no Indian student there for many years, and the President went at once into Canada, where he found three intelligent young "braves,"