. He said, when
the startling words, "Then, Mr. President, where shall I go?" fell
from the lips of the mighty orator, a feeling of awe pervaded
the vast assemblage; something akin to an awful foreboding that
the world would surely come to an end when there was no place in
it for Daniel Webster.

This seems a fitting place to allude to possibly the highest tribute
ever paid by one great orator to another--in the loftiest sense,
a tribute of genius to genius. Mr. Hubbard told me he was one
of the immense audience gathered in Faneuil Hall to ratify the
nomination of Harrison and Tyler soon after the adjournment of the
Whig National Convention in 1840. Edward Everett presided; and
among the speakers were Winthrop, Choate, Webster, and the gifted
Sargent S. Prentiss of Mississippi. The eloquence of the last
named was a proverb in his day. He had but recently delivered a
speech in the House, vindicating his right to his seat as a
Representative from Mississippi, which cast a spell over all who
heard it, and which has come down to the present generation as one
of the masterpieces of oratory. The closing sentence of this
wondrous speech--a thousand times quoted--was: "Deny her representation
upon this floor; then, Mr. Speaker, strike from yonder escutcheon the
star that glitters to the name of Mississippi--and leave only
the stripe, fit emblem of her degradation!"

Upon the conclusion of Prentiss's Faneuil Hall speech, just mentioned,
amidst a tumult of applause such as even Faneuil Hall had rarely
witnessed, Mr. Everett, turning to Mr. Webster, inquired: "Did
you ever hear the equal of that speech?" "Never but once," was
the deep-toned reply, "and then from Prentiss himself."

Judge Baldwin, his long-time associate at the bar of Mississippi, has
given a vivid description of the effect of the power of Mr. Prentiss
before the jury in the prosecution of a noted highwayman and murderer
in that State:

"Phelps was one of the most daring and desperate of ruffians.
He fronted his prosecutor and the court not only with composure,
but with scornful and malignant defiance. When Prentiss arose
to speak, and for some time afterwards, the criminal scowled upon him
a look of hate and insolence. But when the orator, kindling with his
subject, turned upon him and poured down a stream of burning
invective like lava upon his head; when he depicted the villainy
and barbarity of his bold atrocities; when he pictured, in dark
an