GREAT MEN'S BODIES
much responsibility attached to it, for the paltry sum of three thousand dollars a year?" "You have some property," replied Webster, "and can afford it." "I shall not take it under any circumstances," was his answer. Said Webster: "I used every argument I could think of. I plied him in every possible way, and had interview after interview with him. He smoked and smoked; and as I entreated, and begged, and expostulated, the smoke would come thicker and faster. Sometimes he would make a cloud of smoke so thick that I could not see him. He would groan and smoke. I guess he smoked a thousand cigars while he was settling the point. Although he accepted the office with the greatest reluctance, he has filled it with unsurpassed ability; there is not in the world a more upright, conscientious, and able judge than Chief Justice Shaw. He is an honor to the ermine. For that I repeat that the people of Massachusetts owe me a debt of gratitude, if for nothing else."—Harvey's Reminiscences of Webster.
Rufus Choate addressed him in his own way: "In coming into the presence of your Honor, I experience what a Hindoo does when he bows before his idol—I know that you are ugly, but I feel that you are great." But the Chief Justice got back at him. When he heard that a new edition of Worcester's Dictionary had twenty-five hundred new words in it, he exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, don't let Choate get hold of it!"
And look at that body! Its wonderful breadth, its great depth; the almost huge neck; the large hands; everything suggestive of uncommon vitality and unusual physical vigor. No wonder he lived to be eighty, and worked at a great pace all the time, and on the most abstruse and important questions. No feeble body could have ever stood what he went through. It would have given out many years before.
JOHN BANNISTER GIBSON (1780–1853)
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