Half revealed as it was, here was a countenance fairly fit to be called godlike.

That this presence was animated with a brain whose decision had value, might have been learned from the flitting gaze of the leader which, cast now on this or the other, returned always to this man at the right.

There were seven gentlemen of them in all, and of these all were clad in the costume of the day, save this one, who retained the fashion of an earlier time.

His coat might have come from the Revolution, its color possibly the blue of an earlier day.

The trousers fitted close to massive and shapely limbs, and the long waistcoat, not of a modish silk, was buff in color, such as might one time have been worn by Washington himself.
This man, these men, distinguished in every line, might have been statesmen of an earlier day than that of Calhoun, Clay and Benton.
Yet the year of 1850, that time when forced and formal peace began to mask the attitude of sections already arrayed for a later war, might have been called as important as any in our history.
The ranks of these men at the table, too, might have been called arranged as though by some shrewd compromise.