Charles Sprague, who was an excellent critic, said of him fourteen years before. But Webster himself says, "Eloquence does not consist in speech; it is derived from the man, the subject, and from the occasion."

The theory of the Hall of Statuary in Washington is that each State shall furnish a statue of the two most distinguished men in its history. I think most men who care for history would say that the two most distinguished Massachusetts men, since 1620, have been Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Webster; Benjamin Franklin is mentioned in any history of modern times, Daniel Webster in any history of America.

But it so happened that Massachusetts drove Benjamin Franklin away when he was seventeen years old. He served the State afterward at a very important crisis as her agent in England; but he lived in Philadelphia, in London, and in Paris.

So we could not have Franklin's statue in the Statuary Hall, because he did not live in Boston. That was his misfortune and ours. On the other hand, Daniel Webster was born in New Hampshire. He came to Boston to study law with Christopher Gore in the year 1804, almost precisely as Benjamin Franklin went to Phila

delphia to study life when he was a little younger. In 1816 Mr. Webster came to Boston to live, and Massachusetts was his home from that time until he died in 1852. But his statue cannot be in the Statuary Hall for Massachusetts, because he was not born there.

For the same reason which keeps him out, Benjamin Franklin is kept out from the Pennsylvania statues. Of the two statues of Pennsylvania, the first is of Robert Fulton, who would be left out by the rule by which Massachusetts left out Franklin. Of the other most of my present readers never heard. I should like the guess of those who are not informed as to the two which Massachusetts has there. New Hampshire gave a home to Daniel Webster in the Hall. Fortunately, the Nation has had no such restrictions as bound Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In the decision as to the Hall of Fame in New York last year, Washington and Lincoln stand first. In the second rank are Franklin and Webster, "tied" in an even vote. When the busts of these two statesmen are erected, it will be literally true that the stones which the builders rejected stand very near the head of the corner. And in the Capitol, where Franklin is left out from the statuary halls, he does stand

with John Hancock by the staircase in the Senate corridor.

All this by way of preface to my own personal recollection of Mr. Webster, who removed to Boston from Portsmouth six years after my father arrived there. I think they had known each other at Exeter. I think my father had once or twice taken Ezekiel Webster's place in his school at Kingston Street in Boston when Ezekiel was not well. What I know is, that from the time Mr. Webster came to Boston the two families were very intimate with each other. Mr. Webster had been a member of Congress from New Hampshire, and his war speeches, which are important and very interesting, were made when he represented New Hampshire. In 1814 his house in Portsmouth was burned down, and I think it was always a grief to him that the library which he had already collected, which was of interest and value, was destroyed. According to his biographers, who knew, I suppose, it was this misfortune which determined him on leaving New Hampshire. He went to Albany to consider the advantages which that city offered for his residence and practice of the law. One cannot read all this without asking what would have happened IF