UNCLE SAM'S FARM. 76 



fixed at nineteen hundred dollars per annum. In 

 this position he commenced that awful epoch in his 

 life which has this day closed with his death. 



" By the decease of his father, in 1834, Professor 

 Webster inherited a fortune of about $40,000 ; but 

 this has gradually been wasted, until his family are 

 now left with but a comparatively small income. 

 Extravagant in his habits — generous to his family — 

 wishing to maintain a brilliant position in society — 

 he threw his fortune heedlessly away into the vortex 

 of fashionable life. Money went, and debts came ; 

 pecuniary troubles accumulated thick and fast ; his 

 was not the calculating economy that could avert 

 impending ruin. Old friends became ruthless cred- 

 itors — poverty and the jail stared him unpitying in 

 the face — at first he practised fraud, and finally, 

 when disgraceful exposure of some kind must come, 

 he meditated the violent death of his most persecuting 

 creditor. The world knows the rest." 



The town of Lexington was formerly a part of 

 Cambridge ; here it was that the first blood was shed 

 in the cause of the Revolution, and on the spot a 

 monument is erected bearing the following inscrip- 

 tion : — 



