be had
which belonged to the knife, why, even that were not only unworthy of
the man, but so utterly unlike him, for he never indulged in rhetoric or
rhodomontade or claptrap, that one would be inclined to think he was
beside himself, or had been dining out, like Daniel Webster when he
proposed, in the Senate Chamber, to plant our starry banner on the
outermost verge, the Ultima Thule, of our disputed territory, heedless
of consequences. Both Pierpont and Calhoun certainly forgot the
injunction to be "temperate in all things"; and allow me to add, that,
in my judgment, it mattered little who was with, or who against them,
after they had once set the lance in rest, with a windmill in
view,--they only spurred the harder for opposition, and lashed out all
the more vehemently for being cheered, even by the lowliest.
Encouragement and opposition were alike to both, after the rowels were
set, and their beavers closed.

At the time I speak of, Mr. Pierpont and his brother-in-law, Mr. Joseph
L. Lord, kept house together on a street running down hill back of the
State-House,--Hancock Street, if I do not mistake. They had always two
or three boarders, and sometimes more, and among them Erastus A. Lord, a
brother of Joseph, and myself. With these, and with the neighbors,--the
whole neighborhood, I might say, and with all their visiting-list,--our
friend Pierpont was an oracle from the first, and in the church and
parish, after he had been set up in the pulpit, an idol. It was thought
presumptuous for anybody to differ with him upon any subject. Whatever
he said, or thought, or did, was never to be questioned,--never! His
opinions were maxims, his utterances apothegms, his lightest word
authority. And the worst of it all, and the hardest thing for me to
stomach, was, that in all our controversies, for a long time, if he was
not always right, and I always wrong, I was quite sure to come out
second best, in the judgment of his friends and worshippers, who had no
sympathy for anybody who ventured to tilt with their champion.
Nevertheless I persisted, and, not standing much in awe of the pedant
and the pedagogue, however much I admired the logician and the poet or
the lawyer, I lost no opportunity of asserting my independence, and
took, I am afraid, a sort of malicious pleasure in showing that I had
views and opinions of my own, and was determined to do my own thinking,
come what might. For a while this operated against me,--if not al