You remember what a big stir that speech made, of course--everybody remembers it. The people in his State went just wild with pride, and all over the country the papers had a sort of catch head-line: “Another Daniel Webster Come to Judgment!” When the reporters in my own town found out that Ransom was a second cousin of mine, I was put into a scare-head for the only time in my life. For a week I was a public character and important to other people besides the boys that do the work at primaries. I was interviewed every few minutes; and a reporter got me up one night at half-past twelve to ask for some anecdotes of Hector's “Boyhood Days and Rise to Fame.” I didn't oblige that young man, but I knew enough. I was always fond of my first cousin, Mary Ransom, Hector's mother; and in the old days I never passed through Greenville, the little town where they lived, without stopping over, a train or two, to visit with her, and I saw plenty of Hector! I never knew a boy that left the other boys to come into the parlour (when there was company) quicker than Hector, and I certainly never saw a boy that “showed off” more. His mother was wrapped up in him; you could see in a minute that she fairly worshipped him; but I don't know, if it hadn't been for Mary, that I'd have praised his recitations and elocution so much, myself. Mary and I wouldn't any more than get to tell each other how long since we'd heard from Aunt Sue, before Hector would grow uneasy and switch around on the sofa and say: “Ma, I'd rather you wouldn't tell cousin Ben about what happened at the G. A. R. reunion. I don't want to go through all that stuff again.” At that, Mary's eyes would light up and she'd say: “You must, Hector, you must! I want him to hear you do it; he mustn't go away without that!” Then she'd go on to tell me how Hector had recited Lincoln's Gettysburg speech at a meeting of the local post of the G. A. R. and how he was applauded, and that many of the veterans had told him if he kept on he'd be Governor of his State some day, and how proud she was of him and how he was so different from ordinary boys that she was often anxious about him. Then she would urge him to let me have it--and he always would, especially if I said: “Oh, don't _make_ the boy do it, Mary!” He would stand out in the middle of the floor and thrust his chin out, knitting his brow and widening his nostrils, and shout “Of the people, By the people, and For the people” at the top of his lungs in that little parlour. He always had a great talent for mimicry, a talent of which I think he was absolutely unconscious. He would give his speeches in exactly the boy-orator style; that is, he imitated speakers who imitated others who had heard Daniel Webster. Mary and he, however, had no idea that he imitated anybody; they thought it was creative genius.