ely and solemnly taking
leave of his weeping wife, children, kindred, and friends, down to the
humblest members of his household. His death, it is supposed, was
hastened by injuries received by the breaking down of his carriage; but
it did not find him unprepared. Long years before he had erected his own
tomb; and there, on a plain marble slab over the door, the visitor reads
the simple inscription--DANIEL WEBSTER.

Some ten thousand friends, countrymen, and lovers, helped to lay him
there, and one of the orations pronounced in connection with his
departure was thus touchingly closed: "The clasped hands--the dying
prayers--oh, my fellow-citizens, this is a consummation over which tears
of pious sympathy will be shed, after the glories of the forum and the
senate are forgotten."

The following letter to a friend on the choice of a profession, written
by Webster when only twenty years of age, is reprinted from "The Life of
Daniel Webster" by George Ticknor Curtis, through the courtesy of D.
Appleton & Co., the publishers, and with the permission of the widow and
heirs of the author.

"What shall I do? Shall I say, 'Yes, gentlemen,' and sit down here to
spend my days in a kind of a comfortable privacy, or shall I relinquish
these prospects, and enter into a profession, where my feelings will be
constantly harrowed by objects either of dishonesty or misfortune, where
my living must be squeezed from penury (for rich folks seldom go to
law), and my moral principle continually be at hazard? I agree with you
that the law is well calculated to draw forth the powers of the mind,
but what are its effects on the heart? Are they equally propitious? Does
it inspire benevolence, and awake tenderness; or does it, by a frequent
repetition of wretched objects, blunt sensibility, and stifle the still
small voice of mercy?

"The talent with which Heaven has intrusted me is small, very small, yet
I feel responsible for the use of it, and am not willing to pervert it
to purposes reproachful and unjust; nor to hide it, like the slothful
servant, in a napkin.

"Now, I will enumerate the inducements that draw me toward the law:
First, and principally, it is my father's wish. He does not dictate, it
is true, but how much short of dictation is the mere wish of a parent,
whose labors of life are wasted on favors to his children? Even the
delicacy with which the wish is expressed gives it more effect than it
would have in the form of a comman