This seems a fitting place to allude to possibly the highest tribute ever paid by one great orator to another--in the loftiest sense, a tribute of genius to genius. Mr. Hubbard told me he was one of the immense audience gathered in Faneuil Hall to ratify the nomination of Harrison and Tyler soon after the adjournment of the Whig National Convention in 1840. Edward Everett presided; and among the speakers were Winthrop, Choate, Webster, and the gifted Sargent S. Prentiss of Mississippi. The eloquence of the last named was a proverb in his day. He had but recently delivered a speech in the House, vindicating his right to his seat as a Representative from Mississippi, which cast a spell over all who heard it, and which has come down to the present generation as one of the masterpieces of oratory. The closing sentence of this wondrous speech--a thousand times quoted--was: "Deny her representation upon this floor; then, Mr. Speaker, strike from yonder escutcheon the star that glitters to the name of Mississippi--and leave only the stripe, fit emblem of her degradation!" Upon the conclusion of Prentiss's Faneuil Hall speech, just mentioned, amidst a tumult of applause such as even Faneuil Hall had rarely witnessed, Mr. Everett, turning to Mr. Webster, inquired: "Did you ever hear the equal of that speech?" "Never but once," was the deep-toned reply, "and then from Prentiss himself." Judge Baldwin, his long-time associate at the bar of Mississippi, has given a vivid description of the effect of the power of Mr. Prentiss before the jury in the prosecution of a noted highwayman and murderer in that State: "Phelps was one of the most daring and desperate of ruffians. He fronted his prosecutor and the court not only with composure, but with scornful and malignant defiance. When Prentiss arose to speak, and for some time afterwards, the criminal scowled upon him a look of hate and insolence. But when the orator, kindling with his subject, turned upon him and poured down a stream of burning invective like lava upon his head; when he depicted the villainy and barbarity of his bold atrocities; when he pictured, in dark and dismal colors, the fate which awaited him, and the awful judgment to be pronounced at another Bar upon his crimes when his soul be confronted with his innocent victims; when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed; his eyes faltered and fell; until, at length, unable to bear up under self-conviction, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffianly audacity cowed beneath the spell of true courage and triumphant genius." In his early practice in Mississippi, in closing a touching and eloquent appeal to the jury on behalf of a client whose life was trembling in the balance, Prentiss said: