ect of his journey;
and returned with a wife,--that gentle and high-bred lady, a
clergyman's daughter, who was the chief source of the happiness of his
happiest years, and the mother of all his children. He improved in
health, his form expanded, his mind grew, his talents ripened, his
fame spread, during the nine years of his residence at this thriving
and pleasant town.

At Portsmouth, too, he had precisely that external stimulus to
exertion which his large and pleasure-loving nature needed. Jeremiah
Mason was, literally speaking, the giant of the American bar, for he
stood six feet seven inches in his stockings. Like Webster, he was the
son of a valiant Revolutionary officer; like Webster, he was an
hereditary Federalist; like Webster, he had a great mass of brain: but
his mind was more active and acquisitive than Webster's, and his
nineteen years of arduous practice at the bar had stored his memory
with knowledge and given him dexterity in the use of it. Nothing shows
the eminence of Webster's talents more than this, that, very early in
his Portsmouth career, he should have been regarded at the bar of New
Hampshire as the man to be employed against Jeremiah Mason, and his
only fit antagonist. Mason was a vigilant, vigorous opponent,--sure to
be well up in the law and the facts of a cause, sure to detect a flaw
in the argument of opposing counsel. It was in keen encounters with
this wary and learned man that Daniel Webster learned his profession;
and this he always acknowledged. "If," he said once in conversation,--

"if anybody thinks I am somewhat familiar with the law on
some points, and should be curious to know how it happened,
tell him that Jeremiah Mason compelled me to study it. _He_
was my master."

It is honorable, too, to both of them, that, rivals as they were, they
were fast and affectionate friends, each valuing in the other the
qualities in which he was surpassed by him, and each sincerely
believing that the other was the first man of his time and country.
"They say," in Portsmouth, that Mason did not shrink from
remonstrating with his friend upon his carelessness with regard to
money; but, finding the habit inveterate and the man irresistible,
desisted. Webster himself says that two thousand dollars a year was
all that the best practice in New Hampshire could be made to yield;
and that that was inadequate to the support of his family of a wife
and three little children. Two thou