"
Wherever he comes there always is cheer;
If absent, you miss him; you're glad when he's near;
His voice is a trumpet that stirreth the blood;
You feel that he's cheery, and you know that he's good.
No doors in the city have swung open so wide,
To artists at home, and to those o'er the tide;
As, to Mario, Sontag, Badiali, Marini,
To Nilsson and Phillips, Rachel and Salvini.
Much, much does he owe, for the grace of his life,
To the influence ever of his beautiful wife;
She, so grand and so stately, so true and so kind,
So lovely in person and so charming in mind!
I had the pleasure of being well acquainted with Mr. Charles H. Webb,
a truly funny "funny man," who had homes in New York and Nantucket.
His slight stutter only added to the effect of his humorous talk. His
letters to the New York _Tribune_ from Long Branch, Saratoga, etc.,
were widely read. He knew that he wrote absolute nonsense at times,
but nonsense is greatly needed in this world, and exquisitely droll
nonsensical nonsense is as uncommon as common sense. The titles of his
various books are inviting and informing, as _Seaweed and What We
Seed_.
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