"You knew all of the general's relations, too, I suppose? Martin Luther, and Peter the Hermit, and the rest?"
"Knowed um all. Many and many's de time I done waited on de table when Mossa Gawge had um to dinner. I remember dem two gemmen jes' 's well 's if I'd a seen um yesterday. Yes, sah; an' I druv 'em out often!"
"I've frequently seen pictures of Washington in which he is represented sitting upon a white horse. Did he really ride a white horse, or don't you recall the color of his horse?"
"Why, bress your soul; 'call de color ob de hoss—'call de color ob it? Do you see dish yer nigh hoss dat I'm a drivin' now, right yer? Well, dat's de werry hoss Mossa Gawge used to ride. He lef it to me in his will!"
Just then we reached the station, and I dismounted from the hack and paid Washington's body-servant for his service. No doubt a longer conversation with him would have revealed other new and startling facts relating to the Father of His Country.
LITTLE GEMS FROM WEBSTER.
Venerable men! You have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife of your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else, how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewn with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more.... All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber forever in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and He has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!—From "Oration on Laying the Corner-Stone of Bunker Hill Monument," June 17, 1825.
If anything be found in the national Constitution, either by original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any construction be established unacceptable to them, so as to become practically a part of the Constitution, they will amend it at their own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse to change it, who has given or who can give to the State legislatures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or otherwise?—From a Speech delivered in the United States Senate, January 26, 1830.