have done without the faithful arms and hearts of the War Democrats?
And what other voice but that of Douglas could have rallied them to
its support? Had he lived it seems inevitable that the two so long
rivals would have been close friends--that Douglas would have been in
Lincoln's Cabinet, perhaps in Stanton's place. This, however, is not
a memory but a might-have-been, and those are barred out in this Last
Leaf.

Daniel Webster came home to die in 1852. He was plainly failing fast,
but the State for which he stood hoped for the best, and arranged that
he should speak, as so often before, in Faneuil Hall. As I walked
in from Harvard College, over the long "caterpillar bridge" through
Cambridge Street and Dock Square, my freshman mind was greatly
perplexed. My mother's family were perfervid Abolitionists, accepting
the extremest utterances of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. I was
now in that environment, and felt strong impress from the power
and sincerity of the anti-slavery leaders. Fillmore and his
Postmaster-General, N.K. Hall, were old family friends. We children
had chummed with their children. Their kindly, honest faces were among
the best known to us in the circle of our elders. I had learned to
respect no men more. I was about to behold Webster, Fillmore's chief
secretary and counsellor. On the one hand he was much denounced, on
the other adored, in each case with fiery vehemence, and in my little
world the contrasting passions were wildly ablaze. In the mass that
crowded Faneuil Hall we waited long, an interval partly filled by the
eccentric and eloquent Father Taylor, the seamen's preacher, whom
the crowd espied in the gallery and summoned clamorously. My mood was
serious, and it jarred upon me when a classmate, building on current
rumours, speculated irreverently as to the probable contents of
the pitcher on Mr. Webster's desk. He came at last, tumultuously