"You know enough of my miserable catarrh. Its history, since I left your hospitable roof, is not worth noting. There would be nothing found in it, either of the sublime or the beautiful; nothing fit for elegant description or a touch of sentiment. Not that it has not been a great thing in its way; for I think the _sneezing_ it has occasioned has been truly transcendental. A fellow-sufferer from the same affliction, who lived in Cohasset, was asked, the other day, what in the world he took for it? His reply was that he 'took eight handkerchiefs a day.' And this, I believe, is the approved mode of treatment; though the _doses_ here mentioned are too few for severe cases. Suffice it to say, my dear lady, that either from a change of air, or the progress of the season, or, what is more probable, from the natural progress of the disease itself, I am much better than when I left Concord, and I propose to return to Boston to-day, feeling, or hoping, that I may now be struck off the list of invalids."
Notwithstanding this affliction, Mr. Webster made himself agreeable to the ladies of Concord, old and young, and even the little girls, like Louisa Alcott, went to the courthouse to see and hear him. He was present at a large tea-party given by Mrs. R. W. Emerson in his honor, and he renewed his old acquaintance with the Dunbars and Thoreaus. Mr. Emerson, writing to Thoreau September 8, 1843, said, briefly, "You will have heard of our 'Wyman Trial,' and the stir it made in the village. But the Cliff and Walden, which know something of the railroad, knew nothing of that; not a leaf nodded; not a pebble fell;--why should I speak of it to you?" Thoreau was indeed interested in it, and in the striking personality of Webster. To his mother he wrote from Staten Island (August 29, 1843):--
"I should have liked to see Daniel Webster walking about Concord; I suppose the town shook, every step he took. But I trust there were some sturdy Concordians who were not tumbled down by the jar, but represented still the upright town. Where was George Minott? he would not have gone far to see him. Uncle Charles should have been there;--he might as well have been catching cat-naps in Concord as anywhere. And, then, what a whetter-up of his memory this event would have been! You'd have had all the classmates again in alphabetical order reversed,--'and Seth Hunt and Bob Smith--and he was a student of my father's--and where's Put now? and I wonder--you--if Henry's been to see George Jones yet? A little account with Stow--Balcolm--Bigelow--poor, miserable t-o-a-d (sound asleep). I vow--you--what noise was that? saving grace--and few there be. That's clear as preaching--Easter Brooks--morally depraved--how charming is divine philosophy--somewise and some otherwise--Heighho! (Sound asleep again.) Webster's a smart fellow--bears his age well. How old should you think he was? you--does he look as if he were two years younger than I?'"