“You did not leave the Senate for that,” responded the General. “If Secession be here, it's a reason for remaining.” Webster shrugged his big shoulders and went on. As I gazed at the group--waiting, they were, for the opening of the banquet hall--I met many a great face. Among those about the stair-head and in the rooms beyond were Colonel Johnson of Kentucky, tall of form, grave of eye, he who slew Tecumseh; Benton, big, pompous, wise but with a bottomless conceit; the lean Rufus Choate, eloquent and sound; Corwin, round, humorous, with a face of ruddy fun; White, the dignified, in the Senate from my own state of Tennessee; Hill, gray and lame, the General's friend in New Hampshire; Noah, my Hebrew with red hair; Van Buren, Peg's “good little secretary” of state; Vaughn, the British minister; the quickeyed Amos Kendall, with Blair by his side; the recreant Duff Green, now wholly for Calhoun; Calhoun himself, pale, scholarly and fine; Huygens, that ministerial tubby personage, gin-bleary and dull; Krudener, the Russian; Eaton, easy, florid, urbane; Branch and Berrien and Barry and Ingham and the reckless Marcy. The dinner was spread. The decorations were studied in their democracy. Hundreds of candles from many-armed iron branches blazed about the plain walls of the room and made the light of day. For the rest, the hall was hung with flags. The stars and stripes, to be a centerpiece, was draped about a portrait of Jefferson just to the rear of the place where Lee of Virginia, who was to preside, would sit. Extending around the four sides of the room were festooned the flags of the several states. With peculiar ostentation, and next to the national colors, flowed the banner of South Carolina, with its palmetto and rattlesnake--Calhoun's emblem. “Do you see it?” said the General in a low tone, as we approached our places, “do you see Calhoun's flag? That serpent may rattle but it must not strike.” “And if it strike?” “If it strike, it dies.”