y morning until ten o'clock at night were given to labor and
without thought of eating or drinking. At ten o'clock I ate a hearty
supper and then retired, always getting a sound sleep, whatever might
have been the work of the day preceding.

In the last fifteen days of the session the _projet_ of the
Constitution was printed for proof-reading and for corrections twenty-
four times. The record shows that there were but few changes made by
the Convention, and those were formal and unimportant; and never in the
canvass that followed was the suggestion made that the proposed
Constitution failed to represent the mind and purpose of the Convention.

The Address to the People of the State was written by me on the last
day of the Convention, August 1, 1853, and, as I now recall the events
of that day, it was not submitted to the committee, although the
members, by individual action, authorized me to make the report. On
the same day and upon the motion of Mr. Frank W. Bird, of Walpole, the
Convention adopted the following order:--

"Ordered, That the resolves contained in Document No. 128, and the
Address to the People signed by the president and secretaries, be
printed in connection with the copies of the Revised Constitution
ordered to be printed for distribution; and that thirty-five thousand
additional copies of said Constitution, with the Resolves and Address,
be printed for distribution, in accordance with the orders already
adopted." The Convention adjourned at ten minutes before two o'clock
on the morning of August 2. The work as a whole was rejected by the
voters of the State, but the mind and purpose of the Convention have
been expressed during the forty-four years now ended, in the many
amendments that have been engrafted upon the Constitution of 1780.

My intimate acquaintance with Mr. Choate began in this Convention.
I had known him as early as 1842, when he came to Groton and made a
speech in defence of the Whig Party. He was then a member of the
Senate and in the fullness of his powers both intellectual and
physical. In 1853 his physical system was impaired, but his intellect
was as supreme as it had ever been. When I held the office of Governor
I made a visit to Mr. Choate at his house. My associate was Ellis Ames
of Canton. The circumstances were these. The contest with Rhode
Island in regard to the boundary line had reached a crisis. When I
came to office I found upon the Statute Book a resolutio