script, and all others left by him, perished by the fire
which destroyed the Webster House at Marshfield. One of the few scraps
which have survived this fire is a Latin epitaph which he wrote for his
father's horse, Steamboat,--a horse of great speed and endurance,--and
which seldom lay down at night unless he had been overdriven. In
English, it ran thus: "Stop, traveler, for a greater traveler than thou
stops here."

On the Fourth of July, 1845, Charles Sumner delivered, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, an oration on Peace, which provoked
much hostile criticism; and on the next succeeding anniversary of
American Independence, Fletcher Webster delivered an oration on War,
which was designed to show that there are cases "where war, with all its
woes, must be endured."

It is probably the only elaborate discourse of his, which has been
preserved entire. It contains many quotable passages; but we must
content ourselves with the following, which are quite in his father's
style:--

"We meet to brighten the memories of a glorious past, to strengthen
ourselves in our onward progress, to remember great enterprises, to look
forward to a great career."

"We celebrate no single triumph, but the result of a long series of
victories; we celebrate the memory of no mere successful battle, but the
great triumph of a people; the victory of liberty over oppression, won
by suffering and struggle and death; the fruit of high sentiment, of
resolute patriotism, of consummate wisdom, of unshaken faith and trust
in God,--a victory and a triumph not for us only, but for all the
oppressed, everywhere, and for every age to come, ... a victory whose
future results to us and to others no imagination can foresee, and which
are yet but commencing to unfold themselves."

"And does any one believe that these results [to wit, the winning of
American independence, and the building of the American nation] could
have been attained in any other method than by arms and successful
physical resistance."

In 1847, he held the only political office to which he was ever elected
by popular suffrage,--that of representative in the Legislature. In
1850, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Boston by President
Taylor, and he was reappointed to the same office by Presidents Pierce
and Buchanan successively. There were many who would have been glad to
see him in a larger sphere, but "the mark which he made upon his times,"
as Mr. Hillard observes