be disturbed about his money
matters, although he should have been in a prosperous pecuniary
condition. His professional income could not have been less than
twenty thousand dollars a year, and he had just received seventy
thousand dollars as his five per cent. fee as counsel for the
claimants before the Commissioners on Spanish Claims, but he had
begun to purchase land and was almost always harassed for ready
money.

Edward Everett, who was a member of the Massachusetts delegation
in the House, had won early fame as a popular preacher of the
gospel, as a professor at Harvard College, and as the editor of
the _North American Review_. Placed by his marriage above want,
he became noted for his profound learning and persuasive eloquence.
At times he was almost electrical in his utterances; his reasoning
was logical and luminous, and his remarks always gave evidence of
careful study. As a politician Mr. Everett was not successful.
The personification of self-discipline and dignity, he was too much
like an intellectual icicle to find favor with the masses, and he
was deficient in courage when any bold step was to be taken.

George McDuffie, who represented the Edgefield District of South
Carolina, had been taken from labor in a blacksmith's shop by Mr.
Calhoun and became the grateful champion of his patron in the House.
He was a spare, grim-looking man, who was an admirer of Milton,
and who was never known to jest or to smile. As a debater he had
few equals in the House, but he failed when, during the discussion
of the Panama Mission question, he opened his batteries upon Mr.
Webster. The "expounder of the Constitution" retorted with great
force, reminding the gentleman from South Carolina that noisy
declamation was not logic, and that he should not apply coarse
epithets to the President, who could not reply to them. Mr. Webster
then went on to say that he would furnish the gentleman from South
Carolina with high authority on the point to which he had objected,
and quoted from a speech by Mr. Calhoun which effectively extinguished
Mr. McDuffie.

Tristram Burgess, of Rhode Island, who had a snowy head and a Roman
nose, was called "the bald eagle of the House." Although under
fifty years of age, his white hair and bent form gave him a
patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence
and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious
to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self