Yesterday I visited
the residence of the late Hon. Daniel Webster, at Marshfield. There was much
that was interesting to see in the great man's home; I think the two things
that pleased me most were the portraits of his mother, and his black cook, or
housekeeper. The latter was a fine painting, the face so full of intelligence,
gratitude, and all good feelings; and there was an evidence of the true
sympathy and home comfort between master and servant, if it is well to use
those words, in the picture itself, the care with which it was painted, as well
as the speaking face. The other was simply an old-fashioned cut profile, in black
outline, and underneath it the words, "My excellent mother—D.
Webster."
Out of doors, the
wonderful old elm was the greatest attraction, with its branches sweeping the
ground, and making an arbor and a cathedral at once, before the threshold.
Webster himself but it is not well to call up anything but pleasant memories of
the dead; and these do linger about the home he loved. What the nation thinks
of him may be recorded elsewhere.
SOURCE: Daniel
Dulany Addison, Lucy Larcom: Life,
Letters, and Diary, pp. 96-7
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