ago, with the same characteristic ornate and
fervent language, and garnish of Latin references, he elucidated to me
the difference between a pettifogger or litigious searcher for
cases--a _praeco actionum_ as he called him--and a jurist of the Judge
Story stamp.

Already he saw in faith the career for which he turned aside from
every flattering offer that would divert him, conscious of superior
ability to serve at the highest posts to which Democrat joined hands
with Free Soiler to lead. Strange that the seemingly accidental, shall
I say insincere, vote of a coalition should have furnished the most
distinguished and perhaps longest continued Senator of the land!

His empty chair on the Senate floor, drew, last week, at the
obsequies, the spectators' eyes.

But it was unoccupied that he might fill a higher seat prepared,
waiting for, and needing, not the undying part but the everlasting
whole; for we are not _whole_ till we drop our dust! Three
funeral-sensations, I remember,--of Webster, the man of power,
Lincoln, the man of providence, and Sumner, as I delight to call him,
the man of purity.

If the shadow of no demise ever brooded over this region as a huge
pall, a black sheet let down from the sky, like that of the great
New-Englander; and if no public sorrow in our day and generation was
ever keener than when the martyr-president gave up the ghost at the
revengeful stroke of the monster of political slavery, expiring, like
a leviathan, under his hand; never was a more genuine tribute than
will be laid on the Senator's tomb, or a completer satisfaction in an
ended testimony and finished work, whatever part he left for us to
finish. Several years ago, forced by illness away from the theatre of
public duties and affairs into a country refuge, as the sounds came
softened by distance from the arena at the capitol where the
combatants struggled together, however pleasantly fell the counsels of
moderation and prudence on my ear, I recognized the clarion of Sumner,
urging to absolute truth and honor, and, far or near, resounding above
them all.

Here was a man that could not bend or yield, alloy or qualify,
surrender or retreat. Here was an incorruptibility proof against
bribes, and too original in legislatives halls, an originality, if not
of suggestion yet of heroic act. Here was an obstinacy not of will,
but idea; for ideas are more obstinate than any human will in the
world. Here was a necessity not of whim but d