hich preceded great events. He seemed
to be, he said, in a singular and indescribable vessel, but
always the same, moving with great rapidity towards a dark
and indefinite shore. He had had this dream before Antietam,
Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg."

The story is also found in George Eliot's Life (Vol. 3, 113),
as related by Charles Dickens on the authority of Stanton,
with characteristic amplifications.

Yours faithfully,
JOHN HAY.
The Honorable
George F. Hoar
United States Senate

My father, Samuel Hoar of Concord, was born in 1778 and died
in 1856. He was one of the most eminent lawyers at the Massachusetts
Bar. To this statement I can give better testimony than my
own, in the following letter from the Honorable Eben F. Stone,
late member of Congress from the Essex District.

WASHINGTON 9 March, '84.

_My dear Mr. Hoar:_

When I was a law student, I dined at Ipswich in our county,
with the Judges of the Supreme Court and the members of the
Essex Bar, who then had a room and a table by themselves.
The conversation took a professional turn, and a good deal
was said about Mr. Choate's great skill and success as an
advocate. Judge Shaw then remarked that, sitting at nisi
prius in different parts of the State, he had had an opportunity
to compare the different lawyers who were distinguished for
their success with juries, and that there was no man in the
State, in his opinion, who had so much influence with a jury
as Sam Hoar of Concord. This he ascribed not simply to his
legal ability, but largely to the confidence the people had
in his integrity and moral character.

Yours truly,
E. F. STONE.

Mr. Hoar was associated with Mr. Webster in the defence of
Judge Prescott when he was impeached before the Senate of
Massachusetts. He encountered Webster, and Choate, and Jeremiah
Mason, and John Davis, and the elder Marcus Morton, and other
giants of the Bar, in many a hard battle. Mr. Webster makes
affectionate reference to him in a letter to my brother, now
in existence. He was a member of the Harrisburg Convention
which nominated General Harrison for the Presidency in 1839.
He represented Concord in the Massachusetts Convention to
Revise the Constitution, in 1820, in which convention his
father, Samuel Hoar, represented Lincoln. When he first rose
to speak in that body, John Adams said, "That young man reminds
me of my old friend, Roger Sherman." He was a Federalist,
afterwar