Although I saw Mr.Webster several times afterwards, I never heard him speak until the closing year of his life.

The Honorable Lewis Condit, of Morristown, N.J., was in Congress at the time when Webster had his historic combat with Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, and was present during the delivery of the most magnificent speech ever delivered in our Senate.

He described the historic scene to me minutely.
Before twelve o'clock on the 26th day of January, 1830, the Senate chamber was overflowing into the rotunda, and people were offering prices for a few inches of breathing room in the charmed enclosure.
Senator Dixon H.Lewis, from Alabama, who weighed nearly four hundred, became wedged in behind the Vice President's chair, unable to move, and became imbedded in the crowd like a broad-bottomed schooner settled at low tide into the mud.

Being unable to see, he drew out his knife and cut a hole through the stained glass screens that flanked the presiding officer's chair.

That aperture long remained as a memorial of Lewis's curiosity to witness the greatest of American orators deliver the greatest of American orations.