Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/28

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MY FATHER
5

advocate of his State. He was impulsive and lavish, imprudent and always in hot water, although, like the clever Bishop Wilberforce, "he always came out cleaner than he went in." He was philanthropic, and wise (for other people). New Hampshire enjoys to-day, in her fine roads, the result of his wise forecast, for he helped to legislate for them, and her blind and lunatic asylums owe much to his great heart and brilliant brain. He was a lovely, dear, big playmate to his little children. We kept on admiring him until we were no longer little; but I can never forget that sense of protection and security with which I crept into those huge arms, or the love and warmth of that grand, magnificent embrace, when I was cold, unhappy, or misunderstood.

He was amusing too, with his guns and game, the prodigious glory of his military uniforms, blue with gold facings, and a long yellow plume in his chapeau bras, which I found delightfully picturesque. He was a Mason as well, and I often wickedly opened a secret drawer in his closet where I saw strange jewels and insignia which it was not expected that I should behold. On all occasions when a speech was permissible he made one, and his voice was superb; he could be heard "across the Atlantic," and later on, when he vowed to elect the first General Harrison, in 1840, "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," I often heard him address five thousand people, all hanging on his every word. Mr, Webster called him the "first of the stump speakers," and the Hon. Henry Wilson, born a Colbaith, told me that he changed his name to Wilson from admiration of my father's eloquence.

He was a strange, romantic outcrop of Irish blood and Puritan surroundings, singularly unlike his prudent,