One of these had sought out Prentiss, and was attempting to make himself agreeable to him by abusing Foote:  this abuse wound up by denouncing the distinguished Mississippian as a dog.  Prentiss turned sharply upon him with the exclamation:  “If he is a dog, sir, he is our dog, and you shall not abuse him in my presence!” The discomfiture of the toady may be easily imagined; he slunk away, nor did he again obtrude his unwanted presence upon Prentiss during his stay.

Few men have ever so fastened themselves upon the affections of their friends as did Prentiss:  his qualities of heart and head were fascinating, almost beyond humanity; none ever met him for a day and went away unattached; strangers, who knew him not, listening to him, not only admired, but loved him.  He never lost a friend; and all his enemies were political, or from envy.  In the society of ladies he was extremely diffident and unobtrusive, and always apprehensive lest he should be unable to entertain them agreeably.

On one occasion, not long before our final parting, he said he had committed two great errors in his life:  leaving his native home to find one in the South, and not marrying when he first commenced the practice of law.  “My constitution was strong and suited to a northern climate, and there home-influences would have restrained propensities that have grown with indulgence, and are threatening in their consequences.  I feel this:  I am not the strong man I was; mind and body are failing, and the beautiful lines of our friend Wild are constantly recurring to my mind: 

  “’My life is like the autumn leaf,
    Which trembles in the moon’s pale ray: 
  Its hold is frail, its date is brief,
    Restless, and soon to pass away.’

“Why did not Wild give his life to literature, instead of the musty maxims of the law.  Little as he has written, it is enough to preserve his fame as a true poet; and though he has been a member of Congress, and a distinguished one, a lawyer, and a distinguished one, his fame and name will only be perpetuated by his verse, so tender, so touching, and so true to the feelings of the heart.  It is the heart that he lives in.  Ah! it is the heart only which forms and fashions the romance of life; and without this romance, life is scarcely worth the keeping.

  “’Tis midnight—­on the mountains brown
  The cold round moon shines deeply down;
  Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
  Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
  Bespangled with those isles of light,
  So wildly, spiritually bright;
  Who ever gazed upon them shining,
  And turned to earth without repining,
  Nor wished for wings to flee away,
  And mix with their eternal ray?’