A Sportsman 63 



A. Douglas. I have also heard Samuel Houston, 

 in Tremont Temple, Boston, and frequently Edward 

 Everett; also Henry Ward Beecher, Anson G. Bur- 

 lingame, Salmon P. Chase, Caleb Gushing, Franklin 

 Pierce, N. P. Banks, Gladstone, Robert Ingersoll, 

 and others of prominence. I account Wendell Phil- 

 lips although by no means his disciple one of the 

 cleverest, and in language the most graceful and 

 classical of orators I ever heard, surpassing the studied 

 elegance of Everett in his seeming spontaneity and 

 fitness of words, and I am doubtful if Cicero surpassed 

 him. 



I think for impassioned eloquence with lofty ex- 

 pression and personal magnetic power Rufus Choate 

 in his address on Daniel Webster surpassed any I 

 ever heard. This was delivered in the Revere House, 

 in 1853, upon the anniversary of Webster's death, 

 at a banquet given by the immediate friends and 

 admirers in memory of that event. Choate had 

 been a lifelong friend of Webster, and no one could 

 have been selected more fitting for the event. Choate, 

 of tall, thin, and angular form, with a countenance ex- 

 hibiting the emotions of thought and genius in its 

 worn and wrinkled features seamed with singular 

 interlineations, indicative of his intense nervous-san- 

 guine temperament, surmounted with a brow o'er 

 which "the pale cast of thought" seemed enthroned, 

 was confessedly the leader of the Massachusetts 

 Bar, in effective force. In an intellectual sense I 

 was an ardent admirer of the man, and I often stole 

 away in busy hours to listen to and admire the il- 

 luminations and magnetic power of his persuasive 

 eloquence in noted cases. 



