I cannot resist the temptation to record another amusing incident in the summer life of Mr. Webster. One day he had gone to Chelsea Beach to shoot wild fowl. While lying among the tall grass he watched from his concealment the flocks of birds as they flew over the beach and adjacent waters. A flock appeared flying quite low, and he lowered the muzzle of his gun below the horizontal range to bring the birds before his eye. He fired, and instantly there was a loud cry proceeding from the beach below. In alarm Mr. Webster rushed down the bank, and descried a stranger rubbing his face and shoulder ruefully. The sportsman himself was not looking his best. His raiment was disordered and his face was begrimed with powder. “My dear sir,” he inquired anxiously, “did I hit you?” The man answered resentfully, “Yes, you did hit me; _and, from your looks, I should think that I am not the first man you have shot, either_.” CHAPTER XXXVI. THE SEVENTH OF MARCH SPEECH. Were I to undertake a complete account of Mr. Webster’s public acts during the last ten years of his life, I should require to write a volume upon this part of his life alone. This does not enter into my plan. I aim only to give my young readers a general idea of the public and private life of the great statesman, and must refer them for particulars to the valuable Life by George Ticknor Curtis, already more than once referred to. Mr. Webster was strongly opposed to the annexation of Texas, foreseeing that it would justly be resented by the people of the North as tending to increase “the obvious inequality which exists in the representation of the people in Congress by extending slavery and slave representation.” Slavery was the one great flaw in our otherwise glorious system of government. It was a standing reproach among the European nations that a government which claimed to be free held in forcible subjection three million slaves. It sowed dissension between the North and the South, and seemed to be the entering wedge destined ere long to split asunder the great republic. There were men on both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line who openly favored separation, but Mr. Webster was not one of these. His ardent devotion to the Union we have already seen in the glowing peroration to his memorable speech against Hayne. He watched with an anxiety which he did not attempt to conceal the growing exasperation of feeling between the two sections. Though he took the Northern view, he saw that there must be mutual concessions or the Union would be dissolved. He did not wish that event to come in his time, and it was in this frame of mind that he made his last great speech in the Senate—what is known as the seventh of March speech.