thenes without his vehemence or apparent studied eloquence to convince. His mind was as liquid as water, changing with ease from the most profound reasoning and searching analysis to the sarcastic and hu morous, and from the most bitter invective veiled in mild language to the most affect ing pathos. No one can do justice to a description of Mr. Webster without having seen and heard him on a great question which brought out all his versatile powers, and after hearing him when he was over seventy years of age, in the last case and one of the most cele brated he was ever engaged in, the writer confesses his inability to do him justice. His commanding figure, fine physique, large head, deep-set, large, lustrous eyes and alto gether strongly-marked, expressive features, and his powerful, sonorous and flexible voice, at once commanded attention, but it was his mental power and great intellectual strength brought into full play on a great subject that seemed to overshadow all his other qualities. His manner of speaking was deliberate, was void of vehemence, without much gesticulation, but apparently just enough to emphasize every point made. While his action was not remarkably grace ful, it was always appropriate and impres sive, and free from any of the arts often used by orators to captivate an audience. He never hesitated for a word, but seemed to get the right one every time. This was il lustrated when others were describing what Goodyear claimed, Webster interrupted and said it was the " invention," that covered the whole. A United States Senator who was in the Senate during Mr. Webster's last five years there, and present during this argument, told the writer that when he heard Mr. Webster talk on ordinary occasions he did not seem above the general range of senators, and it was only on great questions and subjects that his powers were brought out, and it always seemed that they were never ex
hausted, but if the occasion required he could be still stronger. He said he never had an idea what power there was in a man until he heard Webster's reply to Daniel S. Dickerson who charged him with corruption in settling the northeastern boundary ques tion when Secretary of State under Tyler. He said the whole Senate sat aghast as if they expected some thunder-clap to break in their midst. When Mr. Webster came to Trenton, it was said that he knew very little of the case, and that he picked it up and arranged his argument from Mr. Brady's comprehensive and exhaustive opening, and from consulta tions and close application with his associ ates before the other side closed. The arrangement of his argument, as well as the matter of it, shows how thoroughly he had mastered the case, how skillfully he arranged his points and how ably he applied his great legal knowledge. His allusion to Goodyear's sufferings and the devotion of his wife, in the early part of his argument, brought tears to many in the court-room, and set a sympathetic current in favor of Goodyear, and followed by his effective reply to Choate's effort to gain sympthy for Day, won the case for the for mer so far as the audience was concerned. By the long labor and difficult and pro tracted experiments of Goodyear in perfect ing his inventions, he became greatly im poverished and so involved in debt that he was confined in the debtors' prison in Boston. Mr. Webster depicted most graphically the poverty, reproach and suffering which Goodyear underwent, in his intelligent, pa tient, persevering efforts to produce in the manufacture of rubber a new and useful re sult, for a period of ten years; he said, " It would be painful to speak of his extreme want — the destitution of his family, half clad, he picking up with his own hands, little billets of wood from the wayside to warm the household — suffering reproach — not harsh reproach, for no one could bestow
