"Never was there such an actor lost to the
stage," Jeremiah Mason, his only rival at the New Hampshire bar, used
to say, "as he would have made." Returning in the afternoon from
court, fatigued and languid, his spirits rose again with food and
rest, and the evening was another festival of conversation and
reading. A few months after his settlement at Portsmouth he visited
his native hills, saying nothing respecting the object of his journey;
and returned with a wife,--that gentle and high-bred lady, a
clergyman's daughter, who was the chief source of the happiness of his
happiest years, and the mother of all his children. He improved in
health, his form expanded, his mind grew, his talents ripened, his
fame spread, during the nine years of his residence at this thriving
and pleasant town.
At Portsmouth, too, he had precisely that external stimulus to
exertion which his large and pleasure-loving nature needed. Jeremiah
Mason was, literally speaking, the giant of the American bar, for he
stood six feet seven inches in his stockings. Like Webster, he was the
son of a valiant Revolutionary officer; like Webster, he was an
hereditary Federalist; like Webster, he had a great mass of brain: but
his mind was more active and acquisitive than Webster's, and his
nineteen years of arduous practice at the bar had stored his memory
with knowledge and given him dexterity in the use of it.
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