Daniel Webster's brain was not only very large, but it was in good order
all the time. Sometimes Nature bestows large brains on men who do not rise
to great prominence. Large brains do not always indicate great
intellectual power. These brains are large but of an inferior quality. A
schoolmate of mine used to wear a hat that I could put my head and both
feet into with perfect ease. I remember that he tied my shirt one day
while I was laying my well-rounded limbs in the mill pond near my
childhood's home.
I was mad at the time, but I could not lick him, for he was too large. All
I could do was to patiently untie my shirt while my teeth chattered, then
fling a large, three-cornered taunt in his teeth and run. He kept on
poking fun at me, I remember, till I got dressed, and alluded
incidentally, to my small brain and abnormal feet. This stung my sensitive
nature, and I told him that if I had such a wealth of brain as he had, and
it was of no use to think with, I would take it to a restaurant and have
it breaded. Then I went away.
But we were speaking of Webster. Many lawyers of our day would do well to
read and study the illustrious example of Daniel Webster. He did not sit
in court all day with his feet on the table and howl, “We object,” and
then down his client for $50, just because he had made a noise. I employed
a lawyer once to bring suit for me to recover quite a sum of money due me.
After years of assessments and toilsome litigation, we got a judgment. He
said to me that he was anxious to succeed with the case mainly because he
knew I Wanted to vindicate myself. I said yes, that was the idea exactly.
I wanted to be vindicated.
So he gave me the vindication and took the judgment as a slight
testimonial of his own sterling worth. When I want to be vindicated again
I will do it with one of those self-cocking vindicators that you can carry
in a pocket.
Looking over this letter, I am amazed to see the amount of valuable
information relative to the life of Mr. Webster that I have succeeded in
using. There are, of course, some minor details of Mr. Webster's life
which I have omitted, but nothing of real importance. The true history of
Mr. Webster is epitomized here, and told in a pleasing and graceful
manner, a style that is at once accurate and just and still elegant,
chaste and thoroughly refined, while at the same time there are little
gobs of sly humor in it that are real cute.
[Illustration]
Two Ways of Telling It.
I remember one sunny day in summer, we were sitting in the Boomerang
office, I and the city editor, and he was speaking enviously of my salary
of $150 per month as compared with his of $80, and I had just given him
the venerable minstrel witticism that of course my salary was much larger
than his, but he ought not to forget that he got his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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