The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-02-13

l Open Grave and Said 1 World Will Be Lone-
 some Without Web ster.''
 Nevertheless Lincoln Be- 1 came National Hero-At- titude of Wendell Phillips 1 Toward Lincoln.
 ! In beginning his lecture last night at the library in Stratford, Prof ! Phelps of Yale, said he was a good deal of a sentimentalist and that he grew more and more sentimental as l he grew older. He would rather stand ! on street in London and gaze at a house where Dr. Johnson held conver- saltion with Boswell, or see a house where some of Dickens imaginary characters spoke to each other, than to look upon the most magnificent scenery of the universe. And this was because there is something hu- ] man connected with such a spot Mon. ta1gne once said that he had rather know what a great genius liked for breakfast than to read his books. It Is great thing to celebrate birthdays, especially the Tooth anniversary of ones birth. The year 1909 was annus fnirabilis, a wonderful year. More great men were born in that year than in any other two years in the century Poe was born in January, 1869, and the only thing the South never forgave
 him for was that he was born in Bos-
 ton. Here, in this country today, all Is Lincoln: across the water in Eng
 land all is Darwin. Darwin tried to
 account for the origin of man; Lincoln
 saved the future for men. am more
 interested in my future than in my
 origin.
 Prof. Phelps then named Tennyson,
 Gladstone, Mendelssohn and Chopin as
 having been born in 1909, and exclaim-
 ed "A very remarkable year!'' It is
 a. good thing to celebrate these birth
 days for possibly we can get some
 thing Of the sentiment of a, great gen
 jus. It is impossible for any of us
 to be as great state philosopher as
 Lincoln was. or as good @ lawyer as
 Webster, or as fine an orator as Phil
 HpS-we cannot equal them but we
 may be as good. I believe Lincoln
 was the heir of Webster; if Webster
 had not taught as he did Lincoln could
 not have had the career which came
 to him. He followed the path laid
 out by Webster. The greatest colleg-
 fate debate which ever took place was
 between John c. Calhoun of Harvard
 and Webster of Dartmouth. The fu-
 ture of this country depended upon the
 issue of that dehata There was a
 time when people thought Webster a
 god, but after his speech of the Tth
 of March, 1850, he was considered to
 be almost a. devil. Men in New Eng
 land said what a pity he did not die
 before he made that speech. He spoke
 for the preservation of the Union, and
 was called a traitor; was said to have
 sacrificed all his moral ideas, to have
 forsaken his principles. to have be- come a turncoat, in the hopes of win- ming the South and getting the nomi- nation for the Presidency. Massa- chusetts had not forgiven him when he died. When I was at school Web ster was my hero. I read all of his there was so much dissatisfaction. I read Henry Cabot Lodges life of Web ster, but did not dare to read his speech of 1850 for fear my idol would be demolished. But at last I deter mined to read it. As I read I be- finished I thought it was the most
 magnificent thing he ever wrote. II wrote an essay on that speech for my graduation, but the teachers would not allow me to read it. This country has produced a very few men to com pare with those of Europe, but Web ster ranks with the best of them-with Cicero, Demosthenes, and Gladstone The key to all of his career was the preservation of the Union. Apply that to this whole life and it becomes absolutely consistent and logical We have had four great men without which this country could not have got ton, Webster and Lincoln. Even when a boy Webster insisted that men should adhere to the constitution. It | is the law he said. Do you know | that the first secessionists came from and Connecticut? Even Bryant, when but a boy of 14 with the peculiar to the Yankee boy. wrote a poem in which he told Thomas Jefferson to get out and go about his business. The audacity of the thing! At that time all secession talk came from New England. Why? Because she was in the minority. But Web ster said we are bound to regard the law of the land, and it is better to obey the law than it is to secede. After Haynes of South Carolina had made his famous speech in the Senate, people said it could not be answered.; that all was lost. But Webster re- piled, and he could make things so clear, even knotty problems in finance, even the farmer could understand At the end of Webster's reply to Haynes he said: Liberty and Union, now and forever" etc. This was the solemn truth, and not a. stump speech on the part of Mr. Webster. Orators do not live long in the memory of a people, for their words often perish with them, and when they have gone their per- sonal magnetism cannot be cornmuni- tated, but Webster lives owing to the embodied truth and vitality of his speeches. I think there was some thing prophetic in his last words. He was thought to be dead and some one in the room said: ''He is gone" A voice came from the bed, 'I still live.' we say of him he still lives. At the funeral an old farmer looked into the open grave and said: Daniel Webster, the world without you will be 1onesome!"
 The worst thing about politics is the representative imagines he is the po- litical agent of the people. Webster was a Senator and not a political agent from Massachusetts. He dared to ex- press his convictions even against the opinion of those who sent him to Congress. In 1850 he saw that the civil war was coming, but by the