e fire. It was a person who
talked _to_ them, and argued _with_ them, as though he was "one of the
folks,"--a neighbor dropping in to make an evening call; there was not
the slightest trace of assumption in his manner; but suddenly, after the
discussion had become a little tiresome, certain fiery words would leap
from his lips and make the whole household spring to their feet, ready
to sacrifice life and property for "the Constitution and the Union."
That Webster was thus a kind of invisible presence in thousands of homes
where his face was never seen, shows that his rhetoric had caught an
element of power from his early recollections of the independent,
hard-headed farmers whom he met when a boy in his father's house. The
bodies of these men had become tough and strong in their constant
struggle to force scanty harvests from an unfruitful soil, which only
persistent toil could compel to yield any thing; and their brains,
though forcible and clear, were still not stored with the important
facts and principles which it was his delight to state and expound. In
truth, he ran a race with the demagogues of his time in an attempt to
capture such men as these, thinking them the very backbone of the
country. Whether he succeeded or failed, it would be vain to hunt
through his works to find a single epithet in which he mentioned them
with contempt. He was as incapable of insulting one member of this
landed democracy,--sterile as most of their acres were,--as of insulting
the memory of his father, who belonged to this class.

The late Mr. Peter Harvey used to tell with much zest a story
illustrating the hold which these early associations retained on
Webster's mind throughout his life. Some months after his removal from
Portsmouth to Boston, a servant knocked at his chamber door late in an
April afternoon in the year 1817, with the announcement that three men
were in the drawing-room who insisted on seeing him. Webster was
overwhelmed with fatigue, the result of his Congressional labors and his
attendance on courts of law; and he had determined, after a night's
sleep, to steal a vacation in order to recruit his energies by a
fortnight's fishing and hunting. He suspected that the persons below
were expectant clients; and he resolved, in descending the stairs, not
to accept their offer. He found in the parlor three plain, country-bred,
honest-looking men, who were believers in the innocence of Levi and
Laban Kenniston, accused of r