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How Webster Worked

How Webster Worked image
Parent Issue
Day
16
Month
September
Year
1870
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

In spring oi 124: Mr. Web'ter was much ooooerned ir. the disoussion then goins; on in the House of Roprenontativeg at Washington, upon the tariff. Oue morniog he rosa vory early - earlier even than was his custom- to prepare himself to speak upon it. From long before dayligbt, till the hour when the House met, he was busy with his brief. When he was far advanccd in epeaking a note was brought to him froin the Supreme Court, informing him that the great case of "Gibbons vs. Ogden" would be called on for argument the next moruing. He was astonished at the intelligence, for he had supposed that fter the tariff question should have been disposed of he would still hare ten days to prepare himself for this formid'-ible eonHict, ia which the oonstiUtionality of tbe laws of New York, grantiüg a steamboat monopoly of its tide waters, would be deoided. He brought his speech on the tariff to a conclusión as speedily ae he could, and burried home to malie such preparation for the great law argument as the shortness of the notice would permit. - He had tben takeD no food Bince bis morniug breakfast; but instead of dining he took a moderate dose of medicine and went to bed, and to sleep. At 10 p. M. he awoke, caüed for a bowl of ie, and without other refreshments weut immediately to work. To use his own phrase "the tapes had oot been off the papers for more than a year " He worked all nigtit, and, as he told me more than once, he tbought he never on auy occasion bad bo completely the free use of all his faculties. Ha hardly feit that he had bodily organs, so entirely had his fasting and the medicine done their work. At 9 a. m., after eleven hours of continuous intellectual effort, his brief was completed. He sent for the barber and was ehaved ; be took a very slight breakfast of tea and crackers; he looked over his papers to see that they were all in order, and tied them up ; he read the morning journala to amuse and chango his thoughts, and then he went into court, and made that grand argument which es Judge Wayne said about twenty years aftorward, "released every creek and river, every lake and harbor in our country from the HjOWp" olies." Whjiipjw. h- may have thought f'bis powers on the preceding night, the court and the bar aoknowledged their whole force that day. And yet, at tbe end of fivc hours, when he ceased speaking, he could hardly be eaid to have taken what would amount to huif the refresbments of a common tneal for bove two-and-thirty hours, and, out of the thirty-six hours immediately precediug, he had for thirty-ono Leen in a state of vcry high intellectuul

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus