Another of our famous scholars was Fitzedward Hall, who died lately in England. He was a very respectable scholar in the ordinary college studies, but he attained no special distinction in them as compared with the others whom I have mentioned. He became, however, quite early, interested in Arabic and other Oriental languages, a study which he pursued, I think, without the help of an instructor. He had a very remarkable career. After graduating, he sailed for the East Indies with a view to pursue there the study of the Oriental languages and literature. He took with him letters of introduction to influential persons in Calcutta, and, of course, a sufficient supply of funds. But the vessel on which he was a passenger was wrecked as it approached the shore. He got ashore with difficulty, drenched with sea-water, having lost his letters of introduction and of credit, and with no resources but a few coins which happened to be in his pockets. He knew nobody in Calcutta. He disliked very much to present himself to the persons to whom he had been commended by his friends in America in that sorry plight with the possibility that he might be suspected of being an impostor. Accordingly, he determined that he would take care of himself. He walked about the street to see what he could find to do. As he went along he saw the sign of theOriental Quarterly Review.He went in and inquired for the editor and asked him if he would accept an article. The editor said that he would consider it if it were brought in. Hall then went out and found a bookstore. Going in he spied a copy of Griswold's "Poets and Poetry of America." With a pencil and some sheets of paper, he wrote an article on American literature, filled up with pretty copious extracts. He took it to the editor of theReviewwho paid him for it, I think five pounds, and told him that he should be happy to have him make other contributions. Hall supported himself by writing for that review and some other periodicals published by the same concern until he could send home, get new letters of introduction and credit and support himself as a gentleman. He spent three years in Calcutta studying Hindostanee and Persian, and afterward, Bengalee and Sanscrit. Later he removed to Benares, where he was appointed to a tutorship in the Government College. Then he became professor and afterward Inspector of Schools for Ajmere and Mairwara. He was in a besieged fort for seven months during the Indian Mutiny. He received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford in 1860. He went to London afterward to promote the election of Max Mueller as professor at Oxford. While there he was himself made professor of Sanscrit and of Indian jurisprudence in London University. I saw him in England, I think in 1871, when he was librarian of the great library of the East India Company, having in charge not only a vast library, but the archives of the East India Company going back beyond the time of Cromwell. He showed me many interesting letters and documents in manuscript of Cromwell, Nelson and other famous persons. Professor Edward B. Whitney once told me that with the exception of Max Mueller he considered Hall the foremost Oriental scholar in the world. I suppose Hall would have said the same of Professor Whitney.
Hall maintained his sturdy Americanism throughout his long life in England. He was ready at all times to do battle, in public or in private, when his countrymen were attacked. I think, in many cases, if he had been at home, he would have attacked the same things with which the Englishmen found fault. He could not bear Ruskin. He thought he, himself, as an American had to endure much contempt and injury from Englishmen because of Ruskin's bitter and contemptuous speech. But when we consider that he was an American we must admit that England treated him very well. He had, I suppose, the most welcome admission to all their scientific journals. In his time he was employed on the very best and most important work done in England in his line. He was professor of Hindostanee and of Hindoo law and Indian jurisprudence in King's College in London, also of the Sanscrit language and literature, and Indian history and geography. In April, 1865, he was made Librarian of the India Office, having in his charge the best collection of Oriental manuscripts in the world, twenty thousand in number.
While the catalogues of the libraries show a large number of books published under his name, he said that the greater part of his work had been anonymous.
In 1893 he wrote to a London magazine: "Although I have lived away from America upwards of forty-six years, I feel to this hour, that in writing English I am writing a foreign language."
Next in rank to Child, Lane, Bigelow and Short was Judge Soule. Next to him came George Cheyne Shattuck Choate, one of the well-known family of brothers of that name, sons of a Salem physician. Choate became a physician himself. He was at the head of the Massachusetts Institution for the Insane at Trenton. He afterward had an establishment of his own near New York, where Horace Greeley was under his care. I saw little of him after we graduated. But he was nearly or quite at the head of his department in the country. It is said that his testimony in court involving questions of medical jurisprudence was wonderful for its beauty, its precision and its profound analysis.
But I am inclined to think that the one member of our class whose fame will last to remote posterity, a fame which he will owe to a single poem, is Walter Mitchell. He was a very bright and accomplished person in college and a great favorite with his friends. He studied law, but afterward determined to become a clergyman and took orders in the Episcopal Church. I have never heard him preach, but I have no doubt from his distinction as a writer and scholar in college that he is an excellent preacher. But his poem of the sea entitled "Tacking the Ship off Fire Island" is one of the most spirited and perfect of its kind in literature. You can hear the wind blow and feel the salt in your hair as you read it. I once heard it read by Richard Dana to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, and again by that most accomplished elocutionist, E. Harlow Russell. I never read it or hear it without a renewed admiration.
But the brightest, raciest, wittiest, liveliest, spunkiest of all the youths was Daniel Sargent Curtis, one of the race of that name so well known in Boston for excellence in various departments. Curtis was the son, I believe, of Thomas B. Curtis, the merchant, a nephew of Charles P. Curtis, the eminent lawyer, and a cousin of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis. I do not know what he would not have made of himself if he had cultivated his great literary capacity. Certainly if he had performed the promise of his boyhood he would have been one of the foremost men in American literature. He studied law but pretty soon became a banker. Soon after he took up his residence in Italy, where I suppose he is living now. He produced some serious poetry which he read to some college societies. I hope for the credit of the class and for the country and his name he may have done something in later years which will be given to the world. It is said, I know not how truly, that he was for many years a near neighbor and intimate friend of Browning. When he was in college and in the Law School the boys used to enliven all social gatherings by repeating his good jests as, in later years, the lawyers did those of Rufus Choate, or the people in public life in Washington still later, those of Evarts. Such things lose nine-tenths of their flavor in the repetition and nine parts of the other tenth when they are put in writing. Curtis was quite small in stature but he was plucky as a gamecock, and a little dandyish in his dress. It is said that when he was a freshman, the boys at the Cambridge High School, a good many of whom were much bigger than he was, undertook to throw snowballs at him one day as he went by. Whereupon Curtis marched up to the biggest boy and told him if another snowball were thrown at him he would thrash him and he might pass it over to the boy who did it. The result was that Curtis was not troubled again.
You could not attack or rally him without some bright reply. Horace Gray, afterward the judge, went shooting one day and met Curtis as he was coming back with his gun over West Boston Bridge. Curtis asked him if he had shot anything. Gray said, "No, nothing but a hawk in Watertown. I stopped at the Museum as I came by, and gave it to Agassiz." "I suppose Agassiz said 'Accipter,'" said Curtis.
When Professor Greenleaf resigned his place at the Dane Law School, much to the regret of the students, it was proposed to secure a likeness of him for the lecture room. There was some discussion whether it should be a bust or a picture, and if a bust what should be the material. Curtis said: "Better make it Verd Antique. That means Old Green."
Dr. Beck once required his class each to bring a Latin epigram. Dan Curtis, who was not very fond of work unless it was in the line of his own tastes, sent in the following:
Fugiunt. Qui fugiunt? Galli; tunc moriar contentus.
"What is that, Curtis?" said the Doctor. "Dying words of Wolfe, sir," replied Curtis. "Ah," said the Doctor with great satisfaction. He thought it was Wolf the famous Greek scholar, and thought the epigram highly to Curtis's credit.
I have still in my memory a very bright poem of his. I do not think I ever saw or read it written or in print. But I remember hearing it read in one of the college clubs more than fifty years ago. He has Longfellow's style very happily, including the dropping from a bright and sometimes a sublime line to one which is flat and commonplace, as for instance in the ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington.
Meantime without the surly cannon waited,The sky gleamed overhead.Nothing in Nature's aspect indicatedThat a great man was dead.
This is Curtis's poem:
Wrapped in musing dim and misty,Sit I by the fitful flame;And my thoughts steal down the vistaOf old time, as in a dream.
Here the hero held his quarters,Whom America holds dear;He beloved of all her daughters,Formerly resided here.
Here you often might have seen him,Silvery white his reverend scalp,Frowned above a mighty chapeauLike a storm-cap o'er the Alp.
Up and down these rooms the heroOftentimes would thoughtful stray,Walking now toward the window,Stalking then again away.
By the fireside, quaintly mouldedOft his humid boots would lie;And his queer surtout was foldedOn some strange old chair to dry.
In the yard where now before meUnderclothes, wind-wafted hangWaved the banners of an army;Warriors strode with martial clang.
These things now are all departed,With us on the earth no more,But the chieftain, noble-hearted,Comes to visit me once more.
In he comes without permission,Sits him down before mine eyes,Then I tremble and demnitionCurious thoughts within me rise.
Slow he speaks in accents solemn,Life is all an empty hum,Man, by adulation onlyCan'st thou ever great become.
I ought perhaps to mention a young man of most brilliant promise, an excellent scholar and a great favorite, who died before the class graduated, on a voyage to the East Indies which he undertook in the hope of restoring his health,— Augustus Enoch Daniels. He left behind him onebon motwhich is worth recording. We were translating one day one of the choruses in AEschylus, I think in the Agamemnon, where the phrase occurs [Greek omitted], meaning "couches unvisited by the wind," which he most felicitously rendered "windlass bedsteads." Such is the vanity of human life that it is not uncommon that some hardworking, faithful and bright scholar is remembered only for one single saying, as Hamilton in the House of Commons was remembered for his single speech. Another instance of this is that worthy and excellent teacher of Latin and Professor of History, Henry W. Torrey. He was an instructor in college in our time, afterward left the college to teach a young ladies' school and came back again later as a Professor. I presume if any member of the class of 1846 were asked about Torrey he would say: "Oh, yes. He was an excellent Latin scholar, an excellent teacher in elocution and in history. But all I remember of him is that on one occasion a man who professed to be learned in Egyptian antiquities advertised a course of lectures, one of which was to be illustrated by unrolling from a mummy the bandages which had been untouched since its interment, many centuries before Christ. The savant claimed to be able to read the inscription on the cloth in which the mummy was wrapped and declared that it was the corpse of an Egyptian princess, whose name and history he related. Having given this narrative and excited the expectation of his auditors, the wrappers were taken off and, alas, it turned out to be the body of a man. The poor professor was, of course, much disconcerted and his lectures, I believe, came to a sudden ending. Mr. Torrey said that 'it was undoubtedly the corpse of Spurius Mummius.'"
But no account of my class ought to omit the name of Henry Whitney. He was a universal favorite. In all the disputes which arose in all the divisions of sets or sections, Whitney maintained the regard and affection of the whole class.
After graduating he was a very successful and influential business man in Boston and was President of the Boston & Providence Railroad, which under his masterly administration, attained a very high degree of prosperity. I think he corresponded with every member of the class, and did more to preserve and create a kindly class feeling than any other member. It seemed when he died as if half the college had died. He was a man of great refinement and scholarship, and was fond of collecting rare books. He had a great many editions of Milton which he liked to exhibit to his friends. He had a most delightful wit, and was the author of some very good songs and other humorous poetry.
I do not of course undertake to give sketches of all my classmates, either the living or the dead, or those who have attained distinction as useful and honorable members of society. So far as I know their career since they left college, there is none of them of whom the class or the college need be ashamed.
The different classes had not much intercourse with each other unless it happened in the case of boys who came from the same town, or who came from the same school, until late in the college course, when the members of the Hasty Pudding Club and the Porcellian, the two principal secret societies, formed intimacies beyond their own class in the meetings of those clubs. There were some persons in the classes near mine, both below and above me, with whom I had an acquaintance in college which grew into a cordial friendship in the Law School or in later life. Perhaps, taking him all together, the most brilliant man in Harvard in my time was John Felton. He went to California and became afterward unquestionably the greatest lawyer they have ever had on the Pacific Coast. He was in the class after mine. I knew him slightly in our undergraduate days. But when I went to the Law School in September, 1847, we boarded together in the same house. We speedily became intimate and used to take long walks together of three or four hours every day. We rambled about Watertown and Brighton and Somerville and West Cambridge and had long discussions about law and politics and poetry and metaphysics and literature and our own ambitions and desires. We were constantly in each other's rooms, and often sat up together, sometimes until the constellations set, with the wasteful, time-consuming habits of boyhood.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,How oft, unwearied, have we spent the nightsIn search of deep philosophy,Wit, eloquence and poetry,—Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
John came of a distinguished family. His brother Cornelius was a famous Greek professor, one of the most striking figures about Cambridge. Another brother was Samuel M. Felton, the most distinguished civil engineer in the country of his time; builder of the Fitchburg railroad, afterward builder and President of the Pennsylvania Railroad; the man who conceived the plan of getting the New England troops into Washington by the way of Annapolis when Baltimore was in the power of the Rebels. Another brother was quite distinguished in college in the class of 1851. John after he graduated went to California and never came back from the Pacific Coast or kept up his communication with his old friends, although he received them with great hospitality, I am told, when they went out there. I think he had a fancy that he would keep to himself until he could come back in some great place, like that of Senator or Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was a candidate for the Senate at one time, but was defeated by a much inferior man. He was fond of argument; never was contented without challenging somebody and was a very tough customer to encounter, whatever side of a question he chose to take. He liked, however, nothing better than a sturdy resistance. To yield to him was never the way to win his good will. The first day when we went to live at the same boarding-house, I got into a hot dispute with him at dinner over the Wilmot Proviso, and the constitutional power of Congress to legislate against slavery in the territories, which was then a burning question. John took the Southern side of that question, although I dare say he would have taken the other if a Southerner had introduced it, and we got pretty zealous on both sides and walked home together continuing the argument as we walked. As we separated, Felton said: "We will continue this discussion to-morrow. Meantime, won't you look up the history of the matter a little?" "Yes," said I, "and won't you study up a little on Whately's Logic?" The answer seemed to delight Felton, and he took me into high favor. I never knew a man of such ready wit, although I have known a good many famous wits in my day. But all these things evaporate with time. Or, if you remember them, they are vapid and tasteless in the telling, like champagne which has been uncorked for a week. We were one day discussing some question of law at the table, and John, who had not yet begun to study law himself, put in his oar as usual, when Charles Allen, afterward Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, turned on him with some indignation. "What do you know about it, Johnny? You don't know what a quantum meruit is." "If you had it, 't would kill you," said Felton. He was invited to the dinner given by the people of Nevada in honor of their admission as a State, and there was some discussion about a device for a State seal. Felton suggested that the Irish emblem would be the most appropriate, the "Lyre and shamrock." Once after deciding a case in his favor, Mr. Justice Field said to him: "Felton, I have made great use of your brief in my opinion." "Always do that, Judge," said Felton. He possessed considerable capacity for poetry, although I do not know that he cultivated it much after he left college. He delivered a very successful poem at Commencement, and gave the Phi Beta Kappa poem the next year and read some very witty verses at the Society's dinner the same day. He was much distressed over choosing a subject, and put off and put off writing his poem till within a few days of the time when it was to be delivered. And he finally resolved, in a fit of desperation, that he would go into his room, shut his eyes, turn round three times and take for his subject the first object on which they rested when he opened them. That happened to be a horseshoe which he had picked up in the street and hung over his fireplace for luck. He made a charming poem from this subject, on Superstition. The opening lines are:
Just over the way, with its front to the street,Up one flight of stairs, is a room snug and neat,With a prospect Mark Tapley right jolly would call;—Two churches, one graveyard, one bulging brick wall,Where, raven-like, Science gloats over its wealth,And the skeleton grins at the lectures on health.The tree by the window has twice hailed the SpringSince we circled its trunk our last chorus to sing.Maidens laughed at our shouts, they knew better than we;And the world clanked its chains as we cried, "We are free."On the wall hangs a Horseshoe I found in the street;'Tis the shoe that to-day sets in motion my feet'Tis a comfort, while Europe to freedom awokeIs peeping like chickens just free from their yolkTo think Pope and Monarch their kingdoms may lose;Yet I hang my subject wherever I choose.
He goes on in a more serious strain to sketch the history of superstition and ends with an eloquent aspiration for a day of universal peace:
As now my thoughts like clustering bees have clungTo thee, my Horseshoe, o'er the lintel hung,The future bard, with song more richly fraught,—Some reverenced wrong the nucleus of his thought,Some relic crown or virtuoso's gun,Some nation's banner when all earth is one,—Back through the past in mournful strain shall windWhere demon fancies vex the darkling mind,Where light but faintly streaks the dappled sky,Nor Morn has shot his glittering shafts on high;Trembling with grief and hope, his lyre shall thrillTo twilight times of blending good and ill,Where whizz of bullets, and the clanking chain,Jar on the praise of Peace and Freedom's reign.In louder strains shall burst the exulting close,That sounds the triumph o'er the struggling foes,—The slave unbound, War's iron tongues all dumb,—His glorious Present, our all hail To Come,All hail To Come, when East and West shall be—While rolls between the undividing sea—Two, like the brain, whose halves ne'er think apart,But beat and tremble to one throbbing heart!
He took what was then an unusual method of making himself a good lawyer. That was to begin to deal with a legal principle in historic order, going back to the first case where it was announced and tracing it down through the reports, making no use of text-books. That was the way the old lawyers before Blackstone got their training. I have been told, though that happened after I left Cambridge, that he and Professor Langdell, the eminent teacher at Harvard who had introduced that method with so much success, studied together. Whether it was Felton's plan or Langdell's I do not know.
John Felton died suddenly in May, 1877. Everybody who comes to Washington from California who is old enough speaks with pleasure of his knowledge of Felton and is full of stories of his brilliant wit. He had probably the largest fees ever received by an American lawyer. He is said by his biographer to have received a fee of a million dollars in one case. His death was received with universal sorrow. All the places of business and amusement were closed and the flags displayed at half mast on the day of his funeral.
Another rather interesting figure among the men of the classes above me was Thomas Hill, afterward President of the College. He was a good mathematician and a good preacher. But he was not as successful in the Presidency as his friends hoped. The only thing I remember about him of any importance is highly to his credit. One winter's day a little gaunt-looking and unhappy pig that had strayed away from a drove wandered into the College Yard just as the boys were coming out of evening prayers. The whole surface of the yard was covered with a sheet of thin and very slippery ice. It was rather hard to stand up on it. The boys came across the pig, which was frightened and attempted to run. After running a little, he would slip on the ice and slide and tumble over, and then gather himself up again and try once more. There was a general shout and a general chase. Poor piggy strove to elude his pursuers. His own tail was a little slippery, so that if a boy caught it he did not hold it long. The whole college, pretty much, engaged in the pursuit, which certainly seemed to be great fun. But, on a sudden, there was a loud, angry shout from a stentorian voice as Tom Hill jumped in among the pursuers, who were just on the point of conquering the bewildered animal. "For shame. Take one of your size." The boys saw the point, were filled with mortification, desisted, and allowed the poor creature to go in peace.
The boys generally boarded in the College Commons, where they could board for $2.25 a week on one side, and on the other called "starvation commons" for $1.75 a week. In the latter they had meat only every other day. A few of the sons of the wealthier families boarded in private houses where the rate of board varied from $3 to $3.50 a week. The rooms were furnished very simply, almost always without carpets, though in rare instances the floors would be covered with a cheap carpet which did not last very well under the wear and tear of boyish occupation. The students generally made their own fires and blacked their own boots and drew their own water. But there was a family of negroes named Lewis who performed those services for such boys as desired, at a compensation of $5 or $6 a term. The patriarch of this race was a very interesting old character. He was said to be one hundred years old. He was undoubtedly very near it. One morning, just as we were coming out of the morning prayers, shortly after six o'clock, old Mr. Lewis drove by with a horse which he was said to have bought for $5, and a wagon of about the same value. He had a load of all sorts of vegetables which he had raised in his little garden near where the Arsenal stood and was carrying into Boston to market. One of his old wheels broke and the wagon came down, spilling the old fellow himself and his load of vegetables. He lay there flat on his back, unable to get up, surrounded by turnips and squashes and onions and potatoes, etc. As he lay with his black face and his white, grizzled poll, he was a most ludicrous spectacle. One of us asked him: "Why, Mr. Lewis, what is the matter?" "Well," he said with a mournful tone, "I laid eaout to go into Boston."
I suppose there was more turbulence and what would be called rowdyism in my day than now. At any rate I do not hear of such things very often nowadays. But it was usually of a harmless character. There were very few instances indeed of what would be called dissipation, still fewer of actual vice. The only game which was much in vogue was foot-ball. There was a little attempt to start the English game of cricket and occasionally, in the spring, an old-fashioned, simple game which we called base was played. But the chief game was foot-ball, which was played from the beginning of the September term until the cold weather set in, and sometimes, I believe, in the spring. It was very unlike the game as at present carried on. After evening prayers, which were over about five or ten minutes after six, the boys repaired to the foot-ball ground and ranged themselves on sides nearly equal in number. If one side thought they were not fairly matched they would shout, "More, more," until enough went over to them from the other side to make it about equal. Then one of the best kickers gave the ball a kick toward the other side of the field, and there was a rush and an attempt to get it past the goal. Nobody was allowed to pick up the foot- ball, or to run with it in his hand. A fast runner and good kicker who could get the ball a little outside of the line of his antagonists could often make great progress with it across the field before he was intercepted. It was allowable to trip up one of the other side by thrusting the foot before him. But touching an opponent with the hand would have been resented as an assault and insult. The best foot-ball players were not the strongest men but the swiftest runners, as a rule.
The practice of hazing freshmen during a few weeks after their entering was carried on sometimes under circumstances of a good deal of cruelty. One boy in my class was visited by a party of sophomores, treated with a good deal of indignity, and his feelings extremely outraged. He was attacked by a fever shortly afterward of which he died. During his last hours, in his delirium, he was repeating the scenes of this visit to his room. His father thought that the indignity caused his death. Another was taken out from his room in his night clothes, tied into a chair and left on the public commons in the cold. It was a long time before he was discovered and rescued. A heavy cold and a fit of sickness were the consequence.
There was an entertaining custom of giving out what were called mock parts when the real parts for the exhibitions or Commencement were announced. They were read out from a second-story window to an assemblage of students in the yard, and after the real parts had been given some mock parts were read. Usually some peculiarity of the person to whom they were assigned was made the object of good-natured ridicule in the selection of the subject. For example, one boy, who was rather famous for smoking other fellows' cigars and never having any of his own, had assigned to him as a subject, "The Friendships of this Life all Smoke."
When the parts were assigned for the Commencement, which were given usually to the first half of the class, there was a procession of what was called the Navy Club and an assignment of honors which were in the reverse order of excellence to that observed in the regular parts. The Lord High Admiral was supposed to be the worst scholar in the class,—if possible, one who had been rusticated twice during the college course. The laziest man in the class was Rear Admiral. Then there was a Powder Monkey and a Coxswain, and other naval officers, who were generally famous for what used to be called demerits. The members of the class to whom parts were assigned were called "digs" and marched in the procession, each with a spade on his shoulder, the first scholar, who in our class was Child, as the "dig of digs," having a spade of huge dimensions. I believe James Russell Lowell was the Lord High Admiral in his class. The Rear Admiral in mine was borne about on a couch or litter, supported by four men, having another one marching by his side to carry his pipe, which he was supposed to be too lazy to put into his mouth or take out of his mouth himself. The procession had banners bearing various devices and went around to take leave of the President and the different professors, giving them cheers at their houses. President Everett, who was a serious-minded person, was much offended by the whole proceeding. He sent for some members of the class and remonstrated; told them he had been obliged to apologize to his English servant-girl for such an exhibition. I believe our class was the last one which performed this harmless and highly entertaining ceremony.
One of my classmates, afterward a worthy physician, was a tall man, older considerably than the rest of the class. He used to wear an old-fashioned blue, straight-bodied coat with brass buttons, a buff vest, and nankeen pantaloons which were said to have come down as an heirloom in his family from a remote generation. He was addicted to rather a pompous style of speech. He was very fond of playing the bass-viol, of which he was by no means a very skilful master. He had, as a subject for his mock part, "The Base Violation of all Rules of Harmony." One Sunday evening he had a few friends with him who were singing psalm tunes to the accompaniment of his bass-viol. They made a prodigious noise, not at all to the liking of the proctor who had the care of the discipline of that entry, which was in Holworthy. He went to the room from which the noise issued. It was locked and he had some difficulty in getting in. The persons assembled, instead of maintaining their place, betook themselves to hiding places in the inner rooms. My classmate, however, stood his ground like a Roman and told the officer that his room was his castle and that he had no right to come in. The matter was reported to the Faculty and the musician sent for. Instead of submitting himself, however, he maintained very sturdily that the visit of the official to his room was an outrage which he ought not be asked to endure. He made quite an oration to the Faculty. Thereupon he was sentenced, more for his contumacy than for the original offence, to suspension from the college for two or three months. The class were very indignant and determined to manifest their indignation in a way that should be understood. They got a chariot with six white horses which drove up to his door in Holworthy at midday. Nearly the whole college assembled to see him off. He came out and took his seat in solitary state in the chariot. Some eight or ten of the class on horseback accompanied him as outriders. They drove into Boston to the front door of the Tremont House in great state. It was just at the time the Governor-General of Canada, I think Lord Elgin, was expected in Boston on a great occasion in the history of the city. The waiters and landlord at the Tremont House thought the English nobleman had arrived and hurried down the steps to open the door and meet him. But he got out of his carriage with his carpet-bag in his hand and disappeared in a humble fashion round the corner. The Faculty were very indignant and thought of disciplining severely the members of the class who had got up the burlesque, especially the outriders. Edward Everett then had under consideration the question whether he would accept the Presidency of the College. It was thought that if a rebellion occurred then he would decide against undertaking the responsibility. So they let the whole matter pass.
The principal figure in this scene used to be a thorn in the flesh of Professor Channing. He used to insert very pompous and magniloquent sentences in his themes, much to Channing's disgust. One day Channing took up a theme and held it up and called out, X. X. came to the chair by the Professor's side, and the Professor read, in his shrill voice: "'The sable sons of Afric's burning coast.' You mean negroes, I suppose." He admitted that he did. The Professor took his pen and drew a line over the sentence he had read and substituted the word "negroes" above the line, much to X.'s mortification.
I was guilty of one practical joke of which I have repented all my days, but for which the poetical justice of Providence administered to me, many years afterward, a punishment in kind. There was a classmate who sat next to me in the recitation in the sophomore year, whom everybody knew and liked, but who was not very much interested in study. He got along as he best could by his native wits and such little application as he found absolutely necessary. One day we were reciting in Lowth's Grammar. The Bishop says that in English the substantive singular is made plural for the most part by adding s. Professor Channing called up this classmate of mine, who stated this as follows: "The author says that the distinction between nouns in the singular and plural is that the latter end in s." "Is that a good distinction?" asked the Professor. My neighbor answered with great confidence, "No, sir," as he was well warranted in doing from the form of the question. "Can't you give us some instance of words in the singular number that end in s?" said the Professor. My friend, who was considerable embarrassed, stammered, was staggered, and hesitated a moment. I whispered in his ear, "Hoss," on which he, without any reflection, blurted out, "Hoss." There was a roar of laughter from the class, and the poor fellow sat down, much distressed at his blunder. Channing dismissed the class, and the next day gave us a lecture. He said our uproarious laughter had disturbed Dr. Walker's recitation in the neighboring room, "especially you, Curtis, with your pit laugh." I ought to have risen up instantly and avowed myself the guilty cause of my classmate's innocent blunder. But, much to my own shame and disgrace, I did not do it. But some forty years afterward, I was engaged in an earnest discussion in the Senate Chamber with Butler of South Carolina, at the time of the passage of the first Civil Service law. Butler favored the law and his whole bearing in the discussion was exceedingly proper and creditable. We were talking of some prohibition, of some clause forbidding the imposing assessments upon office-holders for political purposes, and it was proposed to except from the prohibition voluntary contributions for proper election purposes. Butler asked me what I should consider improper election purposes. I hesitated a moment when Miller of California, who was a man of a good deal of fun, whispered in my ear, "Buying shotguns to shoot negroes with," which I, without reflecting and indeed hardly conscious of what I was saying, repeated aloud. Butler, who was a man of high spirit, and quick temper, was furious. He came down upon me with a burst of wrath. I tried to interrupt him. But he was so angry that it was impossible to interrupt him and said something which made it seem to me impossible either to explain or apologize. But I regretted the transaction exceedingly, and have always considered that I was well punished for my joke at the expense of my unhappy classmate.
An anecdote came down from a class before my time which I think ought not to be lost. One of the boys when the cold weather came on in the first term of his freshman year took out from the college library a book which was nearly the largest and thickest volume it contained. It was the works of Bishop Williams, who I think was one of the seven bishops persecuted by James II. The book contained an exceedingly dull treatise on theology. The youth had no special literary tastes, of which anybody knew, and that was the only book he was ever known to take out. He kept it out the six weeks which were allowed, and then renewed it, not taking it back to the library until the hot weather of the following summer. He repeated this in his sophomore and junior and senior years. Dr. Harris, the librarian, was very much puzzled and asked some of the boys if they could tell him why this young man kept Bishop Williams's works so constantly. None of the boys knew. They used to see it lying on his table, but never saw any signs of his reading it. At last one winter night late in the senior year something happened which caused a good deal of excitement. Several of the boys who were down in the yard rushed up in great haste to this classmate's room. It happened to be unlocked. They got in without knocking and found him undressed with nothing on but his nightgown. His bed happened to be near the fire, and standing up on the edge in front of the fire was Bishop Williams's works. It turned out that he was in the habit of thoroughly warming the book and then of putting it in the bed before he got in himself, so that it would serve the function of a warming-pan. The young gentleman turned out in after life to be a very distinguished Bishop himself, an eminent champion of the doctrines of the Episcopal Church, which he had doubtless acquired by absorption.
The boys were always ready for mischief and always kind and easily moved to sympathy. One day just before prayers there was found on the square in front of Willard's Hotel a large load of straw. The owner had stopped and unhitched his horses to feed them at Willard's stable. Some mischievous boy set fire to the load and it burned with a blaze which illuminated the whole neighborhood. Pretty soon the owner appeared in a state of great distress; said he was a very poor man; that he was moving his household furniture and that his beds, chairs, and all the goods he had in the world were in the cart covered up with the straw. The boys immediately took up a subscription and sent the fellow off well satisfied with his sale. It was said he got about twice as much as the value he set on all his goods, and that about a week after he appeared with another load of straw which he left exposed in the same place at the same time in the afternoon. I believe that was not molested.
The people of Cambridge in those days were a quiet folk. The students did not go much into the society of the town unless they happened to have some kindred there. There were a great many old houses, some of which are standing now, built before the Revolutionary War. Some had been occupied by old Tories. Among them was the Craigie House still standing, having been Washington's headquarters, and now more famous still as the residence of Longfellow. There were a few old gentlemen wandering about the streets who were survivors of the generation which just followed the Revolutionary War, among them Dr. Jennison, the old physician, and Dr. Popkin, the old Greek professor, of whom a delightful life was written by President Felton. Mr. Sales, an old Spaniard, had given lessons in Spanish from time immemorial. He was a queer looking old gentleman, who had his gray hair carefully dressed every day by a barber, wearing an ancient style of dress, covered with snuff, but otherwise scrupulously neat. He had a curious bend and walk, which made him seem a little like a dog walking on his hind legs. He was very fond of the boys and they of him. He made full allowance for the exuberance of youth. Two careless students who were driving in a sleigh ran against him in the street and knocked him over and injured him severely. But the old fellow would not betray their names and had nothing to say when somebody talked severely of their carelessness but "Oh, oh, young blood, young blood." I never saw him in the least disturbed or angry with anything the boys said or did except on one occasion. Henry Whitney said, in reciting in Don Quixote, in the course of some discussion, "By Jingo, Mr. Sales." Sales was struck with horror. He said it was the most horrible phrase that ever came from the lips of mortal man, and he should think the walls of the building where they were would fall down on Whitney's head and overwhelm him. What awful and mysterious meaning the words "by Jingo" had for the old Spanish gentleman we never could discover. He declined to give any explanation and treated the subject as one to be avoided with horror ever after. I commend the question to the consideration of philologists.
The treatment of the students in general by the authorities and the college was stern, austere and distant. The students had little social intercourse with the families or the professors, except such of them as had relatives in Cambridge, which allowed intercourse with the families of the professors. The professors did nothing to encourage familiarity, or even to encourage any request for help in the difficulties of study. Indeed a boy who did that fell into disfavor with his companions, and was called a fish.
President Eliot in some speech, I think before the graduates of the Latin School, speaking of his life as a boy, said he had a great respect for his little self. I cannot say that of my young self at Harvard. My time was largely wasted in novel reading or reading books which had not much to do with the college studies, and lounging about in my own room or that of other students. I am not sure that the period of growth from sixteen to twenty is one when it is good for a youth to study hard. So far as my observation extends the poor scholars who have graduated at Harvard become as useful and eminent men in after life as the good scholars. I do not now think of any person, who has graduated first scholar since Edward Everett, who became in after life a very great man, although some of them have been very respectable. Judge Thomas Russell, who was first in the class before mine, was a very successful and brilliant man, performing admirably everything that he undertook. He was a good judge of the Superior Court, a good minister to Venezuela, a good advocate, and an excellent political speaker. But he never attained a place in the world equal to that of his classmate Gray, who, if I remember right, did not have a part at Commencement. Professor Child gained great distinction in his chosen field, but, I incline to think, would have gained the same distinction if he had devoted himself to the same pursuits and had never entered college at all. The first scholar in the class of 1843, the first class that graduated after I entered, was Horace Binney Sargent, a brave soldier, and the author of some beautiful and spirited war lyrics. But there were several of his classmates, including Thomas Hill, John Lowell and Octavius B. Frothingham, who attained much greater distinction. In the class of 1844 the first scholar was Shattuck Hartwell, a highly respectable and worthy gentleman, many years an officer in the Boston Custom House, who spent a large part of his life fitting pupils for college, while Francis Parkman, the historian, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the mathematician, and Dr. John Call Dalton, the eminent physician, neither of whom had a very high record, became distinguished in after life. Among my own classmates, as I have already said, Judge Webb, Fitzedward Hall and Calvin Ellis attained very great distinction, although no one of them stood very high in rank. In the next class John Felton, Judge Endicott, Judge Charles Allen, and Tuckermann, the naturalist, were the persons who have been most famous in after life. I believe no one of them, except Felton who graduated the second scholar, ranked very high in college. I myself graduated with a fairly decent rank. I believe I was the nineteenth scholar in a class of sixty- six. When I graduated I looked back on my wasted four years with a good deal of chagrin and remorse. I set myself resolutely to make up for lost time. I think I can fairly say that I have had few idle moments since. I have probably put as much hard work into life as most men on this continent. Certainly I have put into it all the work that my physical powers, especially my eyes, would permit. I studied law in Concord the first year after graduation. I used to get up at six o'clock in the morning, go to the office, make a fire and read law until breakfast time, which was at seven in the summer and half- past in the winter. Then I went home to breakfast and got back in about three-quarters of an hour and spent the forenoon until one diligently reading law. After dinner, at two o'clock, I read history until four. I spent the next two hours in walking alone in the woods and roads of Concord and the neighboring towns, went back to the office at seven, read a little geometry and algebra, reviewing the slender mathematics which I had studied in college, and then spent two hours in reading Greek. I read through Thucydides, Homer and Xenophon's Hellenica and some other Greek books in that year. Sundays I went to church twice, but shut myself up in a room at home the rest of the day and read a great quantity of English literature, including Milton, Spencer, Chaucer, George Herbert, South's Sermons and other English classics, reading over again Butler's Analogy and Jouffroy. It has been said that if a man wish to acquire a pure English style he should give his days and nights to Addison. I say that if a law student wish to acquire a vigorous and manly English style, the fit vehicle for conveying weighty thoughts to courts or juries or popular assemblages, let him give his days and nights to Robert South.
I spent two years at the Law School after graduating from the College. I cannot state too strongly my great debt to it, and to Franklin Dexter, Simon Greenleaf, Joel Parker, and Theophilus Parsons. I have no remorse for wasted hours during those two years. The time in a Law School is never likely to be wasted if the youth have in him any spark of generous ambition. He sees the practical relation of what he is learning with what he has to do in life. The Dane Law School was then, and I suppose it is even more true of it now, a most admirable place for learning the science of law and preparing for its practice. The youth breathed a legal atmosphere from morning till night all the year round. He had the advantage of most admirable instruction, and the resources of a complete library. He listened to the lectures, he studied the text-books, he was drilled in the recitations, he had practice in the moot courts and in the law clubs. He discussed points of law in the boarding-house and on his walks with his companions. He came to know thoroughly the great men who were his instructors, and to understand their mental processes, and the methods by which they had gained their success. The title of old Nathan Dane to a high place on the roll of his country's benefactors, and to the gratitude of the profession of the law, and of all lovers of jurisprudence throughout the country cannot be disputed.
The foundation of the Republican party, and my personal memories of Daniel Webster, belong to the same period. I will not try to separate them.
The story I am to tell may seem trivial enough to my readers. But it is to me a very tender and sacred memory. The time was ripe for the great movement that abolished slavery. If no one of the eminent men of that day had ever lived other men would have been found in abundance for the work. If Massachusetts had failed in her duty some other State would have taken her place. But in the Providence of God it was given to Massachusetts to lead in this great battle and it was given to these men whom I have to name to be leaders in Massachusetts. I thank God that it was given to my eyes to behold it. The American people have had many great affairs to deal with since that day. They have had great trials and great triumphs. They have won renown among the nations. They have grown in wealth and in power. They have subdued a mighty rebellion. They have carried their flag in triumph to the ends of the earth. They have wrested the last vestige of power in this hemisphere from an old and proud nation who once occupied the place that England has since occupied and which it seems likely we are to occupy hereafter. They have resisted many strong temptations and acquired much glory. I am afraid they have of late yielded for a time to one strong temptation and missed an opportunity for still greater glory, that never will come back. But there was something in that struggle with slavery which exalted the hearts of those who had a part in it, however humble, as no other political battle in history.
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive.
And, surely, to be young was far nearer Heaven than Wordsworth found France in the opening of the French Revolution.
I became of age at just about the time when the Free Soil Party, which was the Republican party in another form, was born. In a very humble capacity I stood by its cradle. It awakened in my heart in early youth all the enthusiasm of which my nature was capable, an enthusiasm which from that day to this has never grown cold. No political party in history was ever formed for objects so great and noble. And no political party in history was ever so great in the accomplishment for liberty, progress and law.
I breathed a pure and bracing atmosphere in those days. It was a time of plain living and high thinking. It was a pretty good education, better than that of any university, to be a young Free Soiler in Massachusetts. I had pretty good company, not in the least due to any merit or standing of my own, but only because the men who were enlisted for the war in the great political battle against slavery were bound to each other by a tie to which no freemasonry could be compared. Samuel G. Howe used, when his duties brought him to Worcester on his monthly visit, to spend an hour or two of an afternoon in my office. I was always welcome to an hour's converse with Charles Allen, the man who gave the signal at Philadelphia for breaking away from the Whig Party. Erastus Hopkins occasionally spent a Sunday with me at my boarding house. When I went to Boston I often spent an hour in Richard Dana's office, and was sure of a kindly greeting if I chanced to encounter Sumner. The restless and ubiquitous Henry Wilson, who, as he gathered and inspired the sentiment of the people, seemed often to be in ten places at once, used to think it worth his while to visit me to find out what the boys were thinking of. In 1851 I was made Chairman of the Free Soil County Committee of Worcester County. I do not think there was ever so good a political organization in the country before, or that there ever has been a better one since. The Free Soilers carried all but six, I think, of the fifty-two towns in that county. I was in correspondence with the leading men in every one of them, and could at any time summon them to Worcester, if there were need.
We acquired by the Mexican War nearly six hundred thousand square miles of territory. When the treaty was signed, the struggle began between freedom and slavery for the control of this imperial domain. No reader of the history of Massachusetts will doubt her interest in such a struggle. Three things stood in the way of lovers of liberty in the Commonwealth.
First, the old attachment to the Whig party;Second, her manufacturing interests; andThird, her devotion to Daniel Webster.
Massachusetts was a Whig State. There were many things which tended to give that great political organization a permanent hold on her people. Its standard of personal character was of the highest. Its leading men—Saltonstall, Reed, Lawrence, Lincoln, Briggs, Allen, Ashmun, Choate, Winthrop, Davis, Everett, and their associates—were men whose private and public honor was without a stain. Its political managers were not its holders of office or its seekers of office. It contained a large body of able and influential men who wielded the power of absolute disinterestedness. They were satisfied if they could contribute, by counsel or labor, to the well-being of the State by the advancement of their cherished political principles. They asked no other reward. The Whigs were in favor of using wisely, but courageously, the forces of the Nation and State to accomplish public objects for which private powers or municipal powers were inadequate. The Whigs desired to develop manufacture by national protection; to foster internal improvements and commerce by liberal grants for rivers and harbors; to endow railroads and canals for public ways by grants of public lands and from the treasury; to maintain a sound currency; and to establish a uniform system for the collection of debts, and for relieving debtors by a National bankruptcy law.
The Whig policy had made Massachusetts known the world over as the model Commonwealth. It had lent the State's credit to railroads. It had established asylums for the blind and insane and deaf and dumb, and had made liberal gifts to schools. The Massachusetts courts were unsurpassed in the world. Her poor laws were humane. All her administrative policies were wise, sound, and economical.
They asked from the National Government only a system of protection that should foster home manufacture, and that they might pursue their commercial and manufacturing occupation in peace.
Daniel Webster was the idol of the people. He was at the fulness of his great intellectual power. The series of speeches and professional and political achievements which began with the oration at Plymouth in 1820 was still in progress. The Whigs of Massachusetts disliked slavery; but they loved the Union. Their political gospel was found in Webster's reply to Hayne and his great debates with Calhoun. It was the one heart's desire of the youth of Massachusetts that their beloved idol and leader should be crowned with the great office of the Presidency.
Mr. Webster tried to avert the conflict by voting against the treaty with Mexico, by which we acquired our great territory in the far West; but in vain. The Whigs feared the overthrow of the Whig Party. The manufacturer and the merchant dreaded an estrangement that would cause the loss of their southern trade, and with it all hope of a law that would protect their manufactures.
It was in this condition of things that I cast my first vote in November, 1847, shortly after I became of age. It was for the Whig Governor. The Whig Party was already divided into two sections, one known as "Cotton Whigs," and the other as "Conscience Whigs." These names had been suggested in a debate in the State Senate in which Mr. Thomas G. Carey, an eminent Boston merchant, had deprecated some proposed anti- slavery resolutions by saying that they were likely to make an unfavorable impression in the South, and to be an injury to business interests; to which Mr. E. R. Hoar of Middlesex answered, that "he thought it quite as desirable that the Legislature should represent the conscience as the cotton of the Commonwealth."
Both parties struggled for the possession of the Whig organization, and both parties hoped for the powerful support of Mr. Webster. The leader of the manufacturing interest was Mr. Abbott Lawrence, a successful, wealthy manufacturer of great business capacity, large generosity, and princely fortune. He had for some years chafed under Mr. Webster's imperious and arrogant bearing. He was on terms of personal intimacy with Henry Clay, and was understood to have inspired the resolutions of the Whig State Convention, a few years before, which by implication condemned Mr. Webster for remaining in President Tyler's Cabinet when his Whig colleagues resigned. But the people of Massachusetts stood by Webster. After the ratification of the Ashburton Treaty, he came home to reassert his old title to leadership and to receive an ovation in Faneuil Hall. In his speech he declared with a significant glance at Mr. Lawrence, then sitting upon the platform: "I am a Whig, a Massachusetts Whig, a Boston Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig. If any man wishes to read me out of the pale of that communion, let him begin, here, now, on the spot, and we will see who goes out first."
The first time I remember seeing Daniel Webster was June 17, 1843, at Bunker Hill. The students of Harvard, where I was a freshman, had a place in the procession. We marched from Cambridge to Boston, three miles and a half, and stood in our places for hours, and then marched over to Charlestown. We were tired out when the oration began. There was a little wind which carried the sound of Mr. Webster's voice away from the place where we stood; so it was hard to hear him during the first part of his speech. He spoke slowly and with great deliberation. There was little in the greater part of that weighty discourse to excite a youthful auditor; but the great thing was to look at the great orator. Waldo Emerson, who was there, said of him:
"His countenance, his figure, and his manners were all in so grand a style that he was, without effort, as superior to his most eminent rivals as they were to the humblest. He alone of men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure in the landscape. There was the Monument, and there was Webster. He knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric signified nothing; he was only to say plain and equal things—grand things, if he had them; and if he had them not, only to abstain from saying unfit things—and the whole occasion was answered by his presence."
He went almost through his weighty discourse without much effect upon his auditors other than that which Emerson so well described. But the wind changed before he finished, and blew toward the other quarter where the boys stood; and he almost lifted them from their feet as his great organ tones rolled out his closing sentences:
"And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered around it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, 'Thank God, I also—AM AN AMERICAN!'"
Mr. Webster came to Concord in the summer of 1843 as counsel for William Wyman, President of the Phoenix Bank of Charlestown, who was indicted for embezzling the funds of the bank. This was one of thecauses celebresof the day. Wyman had been a business man of high standing. Such offences were rare in those days, and the case would have attracted great attention whoever had been for the defence. But the defendant's counsel were Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Franklin Dexter, and my brother, E. R. Hoar, a young man lately admitted to the bar. Mr. Webster, notwithstanding his great fame as a statesman, is said never to have lost his eager interest in causes in which he was retained. When he found himself hard pressed, he put forth all his strength. He was extremely impatient of contradiction. The adulation to which he had been so long accustomed tended to increase a natural, and perhaps not wholly unjustifiable, haughtiness of manner.
The Government was represented by Asahel R. Huntington, of Salem, District Attorney for the district which included Essex and Middlesex. He was a man of great intellectual vigor, unquestioned honesty and courage, possessed of a high sense of the dignity and importance of his office, very plain spoken, and not at all likely to be overawed by any opposing counsel, whatever his fame or dignity. Yet he had a huge reverence for Daniel Webster, whom, like the other Massachusetts Whigs of that day, he probably thought as another described him—
The foremost living man of all the world!
The case was tried three times: The first time at Concord, the second time at Lowell, and the third time at Concord. Mr. Webster had several quite angry encounters with the court and with the prosecuting attorney. He was once extremely disrespectful to Judge Washburn, who replied with great mildness that he was sure the eminent counsel's respect for his own character would be enough to prevent him from any disrespect to the court. Mr. Webster was disarmed by the quiet courtesy of the judge, and gave him no further cause for complaint. At Lowell, where Wyman was convicted, Webster saw the case going against him, and interrupted the charge of the judge several times. At last Judge Allen, who was presiding, said: "Mr. Webster, I cannot suffer myself to be interrupted." Mr. Webster replied: "I cannot suffer my client to be misrepresented," To which the judge answered: "Sit down, sir." Mr. Webster resumed his seat. When the jury went out, Judge Allen turned to the Bar where Mr. Webster was sitting and said: "Mr. Webster." Mr. Webster rose with the unsurpassed courtesy and grace of manner of which he was master, and said: "Will the court pardon me a moment?" He then proceeded to express his regret for the zeal which had impelled him to a seeming disrespect to His Honor, and expressed his sorrow for what had occurred; and the incident was at an end.
At the first trial at Concord, Mr. Webster had frequent altercations with District Attorney Huntington. In his closing argument, which is said to have been one of great power, and which he began by an eloquent reference to the battle of Concord Bridge, which, he said, was fought by Concord farmers that their children might enjoy the blessings of an impartial administration of justice under the law, he said that it was unlikely that Wyman could have abstracted large sums from the bank and no trace of the money be found in his possession. He was a man of small property, living simply and plainly, without extravagant habits or anything which would have been likely to tempt him to such crime. When Huntington came to reply he said, very roughly: "They want to know what's become of the money. I can tell you what's become of the money. Five thousand dollars to one counsel, three thousand dollars to another, two thousand to another," waving his hand in succession toward Webster and Choate and Dexter. Such fees, though common enough now, seemed enormous in those days. Choate smiled in his peculiar fashion, and said nothing; Franklin Dexter looked up from a newspaper he was reading, and exclaimed: "This is beneath our notice"; but Mr. Webster rose to his feet and said with great indignation: "Am I to sit here to hear myself charged with sharing the spoils with a thief?" The presiding judge said: "The counsel for the Government will confine himself to the evidence." That was all. But Mr. Webster was deeply incensed. The jury disagreed. Mr. Webster came to the next trial prepared with an attack on Huntington, in writing, covering many pages, denouncing his method and conduct. This he read to my brother. But Huntington who, as I have said, adored Webster, was unwilling to have another encounter— not in the least from any dread of his antagonist, but solely from his dislike to have a quarrel with the man on earth he most reverenced. Accordingly, Mr. Wells, the District Attorney of Greenfield, was called in, who conducted the trial at Lowell and succeeded in getting a conviction. My brother, who was very fond of Huntington, took an occasion some time afterward to tell Mr. Webster how much Huntington regretted the transaction, and how great was his feeling of reverence and attachment for him. Mr. Webster was placated, and afterward, when an edition of his speeches was published, sent a copy to Huntington with an inscription testifying to his respect.
The general reader may not care for the legal history of the trial, but it may have a certain interest for lawyers. Mr. Wyman was indicted for embezzlement of the funds of the bank under the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, which provided that "if any cashier or other officer, agent or servant of any incorporated bank shall embezzle or fraudulently convert to his own use the property of the bank, he shall be punished," etc. It was earnestly contended that a president of a bank was not an officer within the meaning of the statute; but this contention was overruled by the presiding judge, who was sustained in that view by the Supreme Court on exception. There was, however, no such offence as embezzlement known to the common law. So a person who fraudulently converted to his own use the property of another could only be convicted of larceny; and the offence of larceny could not be committed where the offender had been entrusted with the possession of the property converted, the essence of larceny being the felonious taking of the property from the possession of the owner. Further, nobody could be convicted of larceny except on an indictment or complaint which set forth the time and place of each single conversion. So, if a servant or agent appropriated the fund of his principal, the embezzlement extending over a long period of time, and it was not possible to set forth or to prove the time, place, and circumstances of any particular taking, the offender could not be convicted. The statute to which I have just referred was intended to cure both these difficulties; first, by making persons liable to punishment who fraudulently appropriated the property of others, notwithstanding they had come rightfully into possession; and next, the necessity of setting forth the particular transaction was obviated by an enactment that it should be enough to prove the embezzlement of any sum of money within six months of the time specified in the indictment.
After the conviction of Wyman, the case was carried to the Supreme Court, which held that the statute making bank officers liable included bank presidents. But the court held that the other part of the statute, providing for the mode of setting forth the offence in the indictment, did not apply to bank officers; and that they could only be held on an indictment which described the particular transaction, with time and place. So the verdict of guilty against Wyman was set aside, and a new trial ordered.
Before the new trial came on at Concord, a statute was passed by the Legislature for the purpose of meeting this very case, extending the provisions of the Revised Statutes as to the mode of pleading in such cases to officers of banks. It was claimed and argued by Mr. Choate, with great zeal, eloquence, and learning, that this was anex post factolaw, which could not, under the Constitution, be made applicable to transactions which happened before its passage. Mr. Choate argued this question for several hours. The court took time for consideration, and overruled his contention. There seemed nothing for it but to go to trial again on the facts, upon which one verdict of guilty had already been had. As they were going into the court-house in the morning, Mr. Choate said to Mr. Hoar, whose chief part in the trial, so far, had been finding law books, hunting up authorities, and taking notes of the evidence: "You made a suggestion to me at the last trial which I did not attend to much at the time; but I remember thinking afterward there was something in it." Mr. Hoar replied: "It seems to me that Wyman cannot be convicted of embezzlement unless the funds of the bank were entrusted to him. They must either have been in his actual possession or under his control. There is nothing in the office of president which involves such an authority. It cannot exist unless by the express action of the directors, or as the result of a course of business of the bank." The facts alleged against Wyman were that he had authorized the discount of the notes of some friends of his who were irresponsible, and that he had, in some way, shared the proceeds. Mr. Choate seized upon the suggestion. The Government witnesses, who were chiefly the directors of the bank, were asked in cross-examination whether they had not consented that Mr. Wyman should have the right to dispose of the funds of the bank, or to give him power or authority to dispose of them. They supposed the question was put with the intent of making them morally, if not legally, accomplices in his guilt, or of charging them with want of fidelity or gross carelessness in their office. Accordingly, each of them indignantly denied the imputation, and testified that Wyman had no power or authority to authorize the discount or to meddle with the funds. When the Government case closed, the counsel asked the court to rule that as the funds were never entrusted to the possession of Wyman he could not be convicted of embezzlement. The court so held and directed an acquittal. This is another instance, not unusual in trials in court, of the truth of the old rhyme, with which the readers of "Quentin Durward" are familiar;
The page slew the boar,The peer had the gloire.
Mr. Webster always had a strong and kindly regard for my brother. When Mr. Hoar visited Washington in 1836, Webster received him with great kindness, showed him about the Capitol, and took him to the Supreme Court, where he argued a case. Mr. Webster began by alluding very impressively to the great changes which had taken place in that Tribunal since he first appeared as counsel before them. He said: "No one of the judges who were here then, remains. It has been my duty to pass upon the question of the confirmation of every member of the Bench; and I may say that I treated your honors with entire impartiality, for I voted against every one of you." After the argument was over Mr. Webster gave Mr. Hoar a very interesting sketch of the character of each of the judges, and told him the reasons which caused him to vote against confirmation in each case.
The next time I saw Daniel Webster was on July 4, 1844. He made a call at my father's house in Concord. I was near one of the front windows, and heard a shout from a little crowd that had gathered in the street, and looked out just as Mr. Webster was coming up the front steps. He turned, put his hand into his bosom under his waistcoat and made a stately salutation, and then turned and knocked on the door and was admitted. He was physically the most splendid specimen of noble manhood my eyes ever beheld. It is said, I suppose truly, that he was but a trifle over five feet nine inches high, and weighed one hundred and fifty-four pounds. But then, as on all other occasions that I saw him, I should have been prepared to affirm that he was over six feet high and weighed, at least, two hundred. The same glamour is said to have attended Louis XIV., whose majesty of bearing was such that it never was discovered that he was a man of short stature until he was measured for his coffin.
Mr. Webster was then in the very vigor of his magnificent manhood. He stood perfectly erect. His head was finely poised upon his shoulders. His beautiful black eyes shone out through the caverns of his deep brows like lustrous jewels. His teeth were white and regular, and his smile when he was in gracious mood, especially when talking to women, had an irresistible charm. I remember very little that he said. One thing was, when the backwardness or forwardness of the season was spoken of, that there was a day—I think it was June 15—when, in every year vegetation was at about the same condition of forwardness, whether the spring were early or late. A gentleman who was in the room said: "You have the cool breezes of the sea at Marshfield?" "There, as at other sea places," replied Mr. Webster. When he rose to go, he said: "I have the honor to be a member of the Young Men's Whig Club of Boston. I must be in my place in the ranks."
I heard him also in Faneuil Hall, in the autumn of 1844, after the elections in Maine and Pennsylvania and in the South had made certain the defeat of Mr. Clay. I remember little that he said, except from reading the speech since. What chiefly impressed the audience was the quotation from Milton, so well known now:
What though the field be lost?All is not lost; the unconquerable will,And study of revenge, immortal hate,And courage never to submit or yield,And what is else not be overcome.
I also saw Mr. Webster at the inauguration of Edward Everett as President of Harvard, April 30, 1846. It was perhaps the proudest period of Webster's life. It was also, perhaps, the greatest day of the life of Edward Everett. Webster had been Everett's great over-shadower. Gov. Everett would have been, but for him, the chief public man and the orator of Massachusetts at that time. He had returned from the Court of St. James crowned with new laurels, and had been called to succeed Josiah Quincy as the head of the University. By a simple but impressive inaugural ceremony the Governor had just invested Mr. Everett with his office, and delivered to him the keys and the charter. Everett was stepping forward to deliver his inaugural address when Webster, who had come out from Boston a little late, came in upon the stage by a side door. President and orator and occasion were all forgotten. The whole assembly rose to greet him. It seemed as if the cheering and the clapping of hands and the waving of handkerchiefs would never leave off. The tears gushed down the cheeks of women and young men and old. Everything was forgotten but the one magnificent personality. When the din had subsided somewhat, Mr. Everett, with his never-failing readiness and grace, said: "I would I might anticipate a little the function of my office, and saying—Expectatur oratio in vernacula— call upon my illustrious friend who has just entered upon the stage to speak for me. But I suppose that the proprieties of the occasion require that I speak for myself."