at a time,--why should the solvent and
careful business men of Boston have been taxed, or have taxed
themselves, to pay any part of the expense?

Mr. Lanman, his secretary, gives us this curious and contradictory
account of his pecuniary habits:--

"He made money with ease, and spent it without reflection.
He had accounts with various banks, and men of all parties
were always glad to accommodate him with loans, if he wanted
them. He kept no record of his deposits, unless it were on
slips of paper hidden in his pockets; these matters were
generally left with his secretary. His notes were seldom or
never regularly protested, and when they were, they caused
him an immense deal of mental anxiety. When the writer has
sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thousand dollars, he
has not even looked at it, but packed it away in his
pockets, like so much waste paper. During his long
professional career, he earned money enough to make a dozen
fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and gave it away to the
poor by hundreds and thousands. Begging letters from women
and unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, at
certain periods; and one instance is remembered where, on
six successive days, he sent remittances of fifty and one
hundred dollars to people with whom he was entirely
unacquainted. He was indeed careless, but strictly and
religiously honest, in all his money matters. He knew not
how to be otherwise. The last fee which he ever received for
a single legal argument was $11,000....

"A sanctimonious lady once called upon Mr. Webster, in
Washington, with a long and pitiful story about her
misfortunes and poverty, and asked him for a donation of
money to defray her expenses to her home in a Western city.
He listened with all the patience he could manage, expressed
his surprise that she should have called upon him for money,
simply because he was an officer of the government, and
that, too, when she was a total stranger to him, reprimanded
her in very plain language for her improper conduct, and
_handed her a note of fifty dollars_.

* * * * *

"He had called upon the cashier of the bank where he kept an
account, for the purpose of getting a draft discounted, when
that gentleman expressed some surprise, and casu