-chested; a high intellectual
forehead; manly beauty in every feature; a voice of remarkable sweetness
and flexibility; a mild but deeply penetrating eye; a most retentive
memory; endowed with varied knowledge by extensive reading; unrivaled
in power of oratory; frank in thought, speech, and manner; patient and
forbearing in temper; powerfully governed by the affections, and with
unbounded generosity of disposition, Seargent Smith Prentiss was one of
the most remarkable characters in our history. Living persons who were
adults a generation ago will remember how the newspapers between 1835
and 1850 were filled with his praises as a citizen unapproachable in
oratory, whether he spoke as an advocate at the bar, a debater in the
halls of legislation, or at occasional public gatherings. [1]

S. S. Prentiss was born at Portland, Maine, September 30, 1808. While
yet an infant, he was reduced by a violent fever to the verge of the
grave and deprived for several years of the use of his limbs, the right
leg remaining lame and feeble to the last. For his partial recovery he
was indebted to the unwearied care and devotion of his mother, herself
in delicate health.

During the war of 1812 his father removed to Gorham. At the academy
in this town, then one of the best in Maine, Seargent was fitted for
Bowdoin College, where he was graduated in the class of 1826, at the
age of seventeen. After studying law for a year with Judge Pierce, of
Gorham, he set out for what was at that day the Far West, in quest of
fortune. Having tarried a few months at Cincinnati, he then made his
way down the Mississippi to Natchez, where he obtained the situation
of tutor in a private family. Here he completed his legal studies;
was admitted to the bar in June, 1829, soon afterwards became the
law-partner of Gen. Felix Huston, and almost at a bound stood in the
front rank of his profession in the State. "Boundless good-nature," to
use the language of Dr. Lossing; "keen logic; quickness and aptness
at repartee; overflowing but kindly wit; an absolute earnestness and
sincerity in all he undertook to do, made him a universal favorite
in every circle." In 1832 Mr. Prentiss removed to Vicksburg. John M.
Chilton, a leading member of the bar of that place, thus describes his
first appearance in the Circuit Court of Warren county:

There arrived, with other members of the bar, from Natchez, a limping
youth in plain garb, but in whose bearing there was a manly,