of its victim, and would fain drink his lifeblood. In my opinion, Mr.
Fessenden never felt the slightest personal ill-will against the objects
of his satire, except, indeed, they had endeavored to detract from his
literary reputation,--an offence which he resented with a poet's
sensibility, and seldom failed to punish. With such exceptions, his
works are not properly satirical, but the offspring of a mind
inexhaustibly fertile in ludicrous ideas, which it appended to any topic
in hand. At times, doubtless, the all-pervading frenzy of the times
inspired him with a bitterness not his own. But, in the least
defensible of his writings, he was influenced by an honest zeal for
the public good. There was nothing mercenary in his connection with
politics. To an antagonist who had taunted him with being poor, he
calmly replied, that he "need not have been accused of the crime of
poverty, could he have prostituted his principles to party purposes, and
become the hireling assassin of the dominant faction." Nor can there be
a doubt that the administration would gladly have purchased the pen of
so popular a writer.

I have gained hardly any information of Mr. Fessenden's life between the
years 1807 and 1812; at which latter period, and probably some time
previous, he was settled at the village of Bellows Falls, on Connecticut
River, in the practice of the law. In May of that year, he had the good
fortune to become acquainted with Miss Lydia Tuttle, daughter of Mr.
John Tuttle, an independent and intelligent farmer at Littleton, Mass.
She was then on a visit in Vermont. After her return home, a
correspondence ensued between this lady and Mr. Fessenden, and was
continued till their marriage, in September, 1813. She was considerably
younger than himself, but endowed with the qualities most desirable in
the wife of such a man; and it would not be easy to overestimate how
much his prosperity and happiness were increased by this union. Mrs.