seemed only to elicit new qualities
for admiration. At the forum he dazzled--the jury and the judge were
confounded--the crowd carried him to the stump, and the multitude
listened as to one inspired. Fair ladies vied with each other in
waving tiny hands in token of admiration--the stolid judges of the
Supreme Court wondered at the mind of the apparent boy--even the walls
of Congress echoed forth paeans to his praise. His course was as rapid
and brilliant as that of the meteor that suddenly springs athwart the
heavens, but he was human and accomplished his task, herculean as he
was, at the price of an injured constitution.

In personal appearance Prentiss was eminently handsome, and yet
eminently manly. Although of medium height, there was that in the
carriage of his head that was astonishingly impressive. I shall never
forget him on one occasion, "in '44," when he rose at a public meeting
to reply to an antagonist worthy of his steel. His whole soul was
roused, his high smooth forehead fairly coruscated. He remained silent
for some seconds, and only _looked_. The bald eagle never glanced
so fiercely from his eyry. It seemed as if his deep blue eye would
distend until it swallowed up the thousands of his audience. For an
instant the effect was painful; he saw it and smiled, when a cheer
burst from the admiring multitude that fairly shook the earth.

His voice was clear and sweet, and could be heard at an immense
distance, and yet, to be all like Demosthenes, he had a perceptible
impediment in his speech. As a reader he had no superior. His
narration was clear and unadorned, proper sentences were subduedly
humorous, but the impressive parts were delivered with an effect that
reminded me of the elder Kean.

His imagination was unsurpassed, and the rich stores of his mind
supplied him with never-ending material, quoted and original.
The slightest allusion to anything gave him the key to all its
peculiarities if he had occasion to allude to the diamond, its bed in
the Golconda, its discovery by some poor native, its being associated
with commerce, its polish by the lapidary, its adorning the neck
of beauty, its rays brilliant and serene, its birth, its life,
its history, all flashed upon him. So with every idea in the vast
storehouse of his mind. He seemed to know all things, in mass and in
particulars, never confused, never at a loss--the hearer listened,
wondered, and dreamed. Thoughts of moment came forth as demanded,