It is probable that Webster was one of the few lawyers and statesmen that Mason respected. Mason's curt, sharp, "vitriolic" sarcasms on many men who enjoyed a national reputation, and who were popularly considered the lights of their time, still remain in the memories of his surviving associates, as things which may be quoted in conversation, but which it would be cruel to put into print. Of Webster, however, he never seems to have spoken a contemptuous word. Indeed, Mason, though fourteen years older than Webster, and fighting him at the Portsmouth bar with all the formidable force of his logic and learning, was from the first his cordial friend. That friendship, early established between strong natures so opposite in character, was never disturbed by any collision in the courts. In a letter written, I think, a few weeks after he had made that "Reply to Hayne" which is conceded to be one of the great masterpieces of eloquence in the recorded oratory of the world, Webster wrote jocularly to Mason: "I have been written to, to go to New Hampshire, to try a cause against you next August.... If it were an easy and plain case on our side, I might be willing to go; but I have some of your _pounding in my bones yet_, and I don't care about any more till that wears out." It may be said that Webster's argument in the celebrated "Dartmouth College Case," before the Supreme Court of the United States, placed him, at the age of thirty-six, in the foremost rank of the constitutional lawyers of the country. For the main points of the reasoning, and for the exhaustive citation of authorities by which the reasoning was sustained, he was probably indebted to Mason, who had previously argued the case before the Superior Court of New Hampshire; but his superiority to Mason was shown in the eloquence, the moral power, he infused into his reasoning, so as to make the dullest citation of legal authority _tell_ on the minds he addressed.