Morning journal and courier., 1880-06-01
A Gathering of Noted Men.
Webster, Irving, ,Osgood, Bryant, ,and Other Attendants at R Cooper Memorial Meet Ing Twenty-Five Years ago.

Webster, Irving, ,Osgood, ,Bry ant, a nd Other Attendants at a Cooper Memorial Meet Ing Twenty-Five Years ago.
 From the New York Field GIass.J
 As I saw the remains of Dr. Samuel Os- good born up the aisle of St Thomas church, the other morning, amid stately procession of robed ecclesiastics my mind went back to l a scene. between 25 and 30 years ago, in which he took memorable part.
 The friends of James Fenimore Cooper | availed themselves of the presence of Daniel Webster in New York to give special interest to public meeting in commemoration of him with vieM to the erection of 0 monument to his memory. Washington Irving was to preside, William Cullen Bryant was to deliv- CT the address. Daniel Webster was to be present, and all the lterati of America far i'and near, were to occupy the stage of what was then known as the Tripler afterward Metropolitan Hall, in Broadway The build | ing was capacious enough to hold vast null I titude, and, though price for admission was charged, it's floors and galleries were filled \ tosoyerAoWings The audience itself yytts rep resentative of the culture and refinement of ! the city. more brilliant assemblage has | seldom been seen. was young enough for | the spectacle and occasion to make a great impression upon me.
 | The stage remained empty for some time | after the house was full when the folding ! doors in the rear suddenly opened and nthe vesta of the illuminated room behind we l caught sight of the throng of distinguished I men who then filled the public eye-the ven erable contemporaries of Cooper and the ris- \ ing regulations of our own time. But con spicuous among them all, in physical pres ence alone, stood MT. Webster. He stood l among the foremost, dressed in his favorite costume on great occasions, like the Whig or Continental uniform-blue dress-coat, with | bright gilt buttons, and a long buff waistcoat 1 reaching several inches below the waistband It was the year before his death, and he had been very ill The effort had been a great one which he had made to be present now | Any one who remembers his stupendous ap- pearance when in health and vigor, as I could ! when boy, with his dark complexion black hair, and large glowing black eyes, under the | shelf of the Olympian brow-the astonish- ! ment and delight of phrenologists-will easi- l ly conceive how he looked then, when ashy pale his hair scanty and iron gray, yet l his figure erect and commanding as ever; and 1 though movi ing slowly and feebly to his place. | bearing himself in that thrown back charac- | teristic way in which all New Workers are ! now accustomed to see him in bronze on his pedestal in Central Park Under the blaze ! of the gas light his massive took granite look, the material of his own native hills I | had seen him, often, close by, and had talked
 to him when in my teens, but the impression ! he made at this moment was the grandest I | undersigned dramatic accessories of the spec | tacle I never yet beheld his equal for per sonal presence. I believe it was once said of | him that no man ever was so wise as Webster looked. He was only feet 10 inches in I height, but his breadth of chest, tremendous | head, and magnificent bearing made him ap- pear gigantic amid the crowd that then sur | rounded him. He was seated in the middle ! of the sofa at the front of the stage with Bryant close beside him on his right and Irving on his left.
 The face and figure of Bryant, so recently
 conspicuous among us for his patriarchal I beard and picturesque head, looked almost | insignificant under the shadow of the colossal statesmen, and Irving looked no better. Bry- I ant, small, thin faced, and closely shaven at l that time, serious, cold, and stiff in manner, hardly gave promise of what long years of conscious public veneration and the hoary crown of glory did afterward to make him | both in personal appearance and benignityo of ! aspect, to this generation. Irving, kindly | faced always, plain, gentle unassuming whose 1 chesnut wig and horid face denied his age 1 arose, and came forward to speak. His ear | Hest friends had called him the spectator, I because the presence of auditors always | struck him dumb. But the assemblage did not appear to know it, and the hush was l something awful to any one who did. He ] opened his mouth and, with a hoarse gasp, said something about public speaking not ! being among his gifts, and, with a nervous l twist in his dear old countenance, added something more about Daniel Webster, and l shrank back into his corner of the sofa | When Mir. Webster arose there was tenn pest The applause rolled toward him in | volume after volume. If his demi-god pres | ence could not magnetize the common mob, | it could and it did excite this multitude into demonstration of shouting, stamping, and | waving of hats and handkerchiefs, long con- l tinued and oft reiterated, which must have l been astonishing to him as it was gratify- 1 ing. He spoke only two three minutes, or about a dozen or twenty lines in a newspaper column, in his characteristic way evidently forming each sentence complete l before slowly uttering it; his pronunciation old fashioned, with & savor of New England | his voice, rather weak at first, rising once or twice into that volume, and those tones like | low, rolling thunder, which had made both his conversation and oratory so impressive 1 in his prime.
 Bryant then took his place at the desk and
 read his eulogy upon the great novelist Af ! ter he had concluded, the general speaking began. Toward the close of the evening, Dr. 1 Osgood was called out. have the impression I not only from what he has since told me- but | from something that occurred at the time, | that his speaking at all was accident. At ' any rate, the sense in the audience that he was utterly unprepared gave him the oppor- 1 tunity to take them, as he did, by surprise. l The lapse of quarter of century has given | him, too, quite another look to those who
 only lately knew him. At that time, though
 nearly 40, he was very youthful=looking; he l did not wear the grayish beard which lately almost covered his face and his coal black
 hair contrasted vividly with complexion as l white marble. His features regular ] and almost Puritanically severe-a look which 1 his tall white cravat did not lessen.
 His speech came in three great outbursts,
 under the effect of which, each time, he | seemed to reel as if intense excitement had
 carried him out of himself Three times he leaned forward with his hand to his forehead, as if the effort had made 1t ache It may have been his fashion of collecting his thoughts. At any rate, what he did say, and the way he said it-in voice whose orotund
 tones and scholarly enunciation filled the
 building to the brim--every word evidently impromptu and spontaneous created the
 most astonishing excitement, and three times the return came to him in salvos that seemed
 only equaled by those which had greeted MT. Webster himself. One of these outbursts was over Cooper, of course. Webster, fa- tigued, had almost slept through the evening, being repeatedly reused by MT. Harvey be- hind him. But he needed no awakening now.
 He gradually reused himself, startled into unwonted attention by Dr. Osgoods eloquence, and when the burst closed it found him lean
 ing forward at his full height-he sat very
 high with his granite face turned upward to
 the speaker, as II fapt and astonlshed, like
 the rest of us, at what he had heard. He
 too, joined in the applause, striking his white
 gloved hands together with hearty delight
 But his hands went modestly before his own
 face at the next instant, for the succeeding
 burst was about himself, and the laundering
 scene was renewed tenfold.
 He and Irving and Bryant have gone. Few,
 If any, remain whe occupied that platform;
 and now the bright public-spirited, scholar
 ly, eloquent Osgood will be seen no more
 The Hale Brothers at Glastonbury estimate
 their loss on their strawberry crop, as the
 result of the drought, at over two thousand dollars.
 Edson Shepard of Brookfeld, was found
 dead on the bank of stream where he had
 been fishing on Friday, It is supposed that
 he was sunstruck or had fallen in fit.
 Hazardville escaped without injury from
 Fridays tornado, but good many fences
 AT--