Among them were those distinguished as lawyers, statesmen, and preachers. To name some to the neglect of others would seem to be invidious. But among the lawyers, Samuel Glover and James O. Broadhead; among the preachers, Henry A. Nelson, Truman M. Post, Wm. G. Eliot and Father Smarius; among the statesmen, Frank P. Blair and Edward Bates, the latter afterwards Attorney-general in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, are names which readily occur to those of that generation who still live. When, in the autumn of 1858, I made St. Louis my adopted home, the name of Thomas H. Benton was on all lips. He had died in April of that year. The people of the city were justly very proud of him. He had represented Missouri for thirty years in the Senate of the United States, and was unquestionably the most distinguished man of the State and of the Northwest. A funeral procession fully five miles in length had followed his body to its burial-place in Belle Fontaine Cemetery. But this great man, like many others who have been pre-eminent, had marked peculiarities. In the Senate he was called “The Magisterial.” In consonance with that descriptive phrase, when he addressed crowds at political meetings in St. Louis, he never said, “Fellow-citizens,” but always simply, “Citizens.” And the contents of his speeches from the stump were often quite as magisterial. Mr. Benton, while United States Senator, at times took an active part in the election of congressmen from St. Louis. It was customary then for those opposed to each other to speak in turn to the people from the same platform. On one occasion Mr. Crum was the name of the candidate who, with Mr. Benton, was addressing the voters of the city. Near the close of one of Mr. Benton’s speeches, he said, “Citizens, is my opponent a loaf, or even a crust? No,” then suiting the action to the word, he apparently picked up and held a very small particle between his thumb and finger, while he added in a tone of great contempt,—“No, citizens, he is nothing but a tiny Crum.” During another canvass, he was stoutly opposing Mr. Bogie, who was a candidate for Congress. Late one evening when about to close his speech in reply to him, he said, “Citizens, you have been told that my opponent’s name is Bogie. Citizens, it is a mistake; his name is Bogus. But, citizens, notwithstanding that, like Cato of Rome, I would now send my servants (slaves) to light him home, were it not that to-morrow you would be asking, ‘Mr. Benton, what sort of company do your servants keep?’” In 1856, his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, was offered the Republican nomination for the Presidency, and asked him if he thought it was best for him to accept it? Benton, believing the Republican party to be sectional, was bitterly opposed to it; so he said to Fremont, “If you accept the nomination, I’ll drop you like a hot potato, sir! like a hot potato, sir!”