Tantivy, tantivy, This day a stag must die.
He concluded there was no occasion for any further alarm.
When Mr. Webster went to the Senate next morning, as he made his way through the crowded chamber to his seat, John M. Clayton, of Delaware, said to him: "Mr. Webster, I hope you are primed and loaded this morning." "Five fingers, sir," was the reply, with a gesture as if pointing to a gun-barrel.
Mr. Winthrop says: "Of his emotions he said himself not long afterward, 'I felt as if every thing I had ever seen or read or heard was floating before me in one grand panorama, and I had little else to do than to reach up and cull a thunderbolt and hurl it at him.'"
What he said to Hiram Ketcham, of the Reply to Hayne, is true of nearly all his great speeches:
"In one sense I had no preparation whatever, but in another sense I was fully prepared. I did not know what words I should use when I rose to my feet, nor the order of argument in which I should proceed. These came to me under the excitement of debate. But I understood the subject as well as I was capable of understanding it. I had studied it; I had often urged similar arguments before other tribunals, and in this sense of the term I was thoroughly prepared."
It is clear that there was absolutely no time for the preparation of the language of Webster's Reply to Hayne. He had made an extemporaneous reply to Hayne--to an elaborate speech of Hayne's--the morning after it was delivered. Hayne replied to him, and Webster, after a single night's interval, made in two successive days the most famous speech in American history.
We may sum up what we know of Mr. Webster's habit of preparation and composition as follows:
First. He spoke always upon great subjects.
Second. They were subjects upon which he had long meditated with the expectation that he would be called upon to discuss them in public.
Third. He had matured in his mind the arguments on great public questions, and also eloquent thoughts and sentences which had occurred to him during such meditations, ready for use when such occasion came.
Fourth. With these exceptions his speeches were usually unpremeditated, both as to language and order of arrangement, except so far as he jotted down some points or heads just before he spoke.