GREAT MEN'S BODIES
times violence was threatened to individuals. Many armed themselves to repel an assault if they should be attacked. His son once asked him why he, too, did not arm himself. His reply was: 'My son, I war with principles, not with men. I give no occasion for a personal assault. Besides,' he added, drawing himself up to his full height, 'few men would venture to assail me in the street; if one should, he would probably be put to rest for a fortnight for his temerity.' Webster certainly was not a handsome man; but he was tall, with a chest like a Hercules; a magnificent head, with beetling brows, and cavernous, melancholy black eyes of the most searching and significant expression. No other human eye was ever like his."
They put men to sleep in the prize-ring. But it is only for a few minutes, or even seconds. But Webster's plan was to make it so effectual that it would last a fortnight. Fowler, the famous phrenologist, used to say that Webster's chest girthed forty-five inches. If so, for a five-foot-ten man he was a wonder. Certainly he had a vast chest—at once a mighty factory and storehouse of vitality, worthy to feed such a colossal brain. And to do such a gigantic life-work. And he held his chest as a man ought to do; and with the very effect so holding such a chest will always bring—an effect well told by Finck: "An arched chest imparts to man's whole figure an aspect of physical perfection, not to say sublimity, as may be seen in the ancient statues of gods, in which the chest is intentionally made more prominent than it can ever be in a man; presumably in order to weaken the impression of the chest's more animal neighbor, the abdomen. There is a deep meaning in our phraseology which localizes courage, boldness, martial valor, in a man's vigorous breast."
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