From Farm Boy to Senator

One day after a reprimand, which was tempered, however, by a compliment to his natural abilities, Daniel determined to surprise his teacher.

The task assigned him to prepare was one hundred lines of Virgil, a long lesson, as many boys would think. Daniel did not go to bed, but spent all night in poring over his book.

The next day, when the hour for recitation came, Dan recited his lesson with fluency and correctness.

“Very well,” said Dr. Wood, preparing to close the book.

“But, doctor, I have a few more lines that I can recite.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Wood, supposing that Dan might have read twenty-five or thirty lines more. But the boy kept on till he had completed a second hundred.

“Really, Dan, I compliment you on your industry,” said his teacher, again about to close the book.

“But,” said Dan, “I have studied further.” “Very remarkable,” said the minister in surprise; “well, let us have them.”

Dan rolled off another hundred lines, which he appeared to know quite as well as the previous two hundred.

“You are a smart boy!” said the doctor approvingly, and not without a feeling of relief, for it is rather tedious to listen critically to the translation of three hundred lines.

“But,” said Dan, “I am not through yet.”

“Pray how much have you read?” asked Dr. Wood in amazement.

“I can recite five hundred more if you like,” said Dan, his eyes twinkling with enjoyment at the doctor’s surprise.

“I think that will do for to-day,” said Dr. Wood. “I don’t think I shall have time to hear them now. You may have the rest of the day for pigeon shooting.”

Indeed Dan was always fond of sport, and not particularly fond of farm-work. My boy reader may like to read an anecdote of this time, which I will give in the very words in which Daniel told it to some friends at a later day.

While at Dr. Wood’s, “my father sent for me in haying time to help him, and put me into a field to turn hay, and left me. It was pretty lonely there, and, after working some time, I found it very dull; and, as I knew my father was gone away, I walked home, and asked my sister Sally if she did not want to go and pick some whortleberries. She said yes. So I went and got some horses, and put a side-saddle on one, and we set off. We did not get home till it was pretty late, and I soon went to bed. When my father came home he asked my mother where I was, and what I had been about. She told him. The next morning when I awoke I saw all the clothes I had brought from Dr. Wood’s tied up in a small bundle again. When I saw my father he asked me how I liked haying. I told him I found it ‘pretty dull and lonesome yesterday.’ ’Well,’ said he, ‘I believe you may as well go back to Dr. Wood’s.’ So I took my bundle under my arm, and on my way I met Thomas W. Thompson, a lawyer in Salisbury; he laughed very heartily when he saw me. ‘So,’ said he, ’your farming is over, is it?’”

It will occur to my readers that, as Judge Webster was struggling so earnestly to give Dan an education, it would have been more considerate for the boy to have remained at his task, and so saved his father the trouble of finishing it. However, it is not my intention to present the boy as in all respects a model, though it is certain that he appreciated and was thoroughly grateful for his father’s self-sacrificing devotion.

On one occasion Dan was set to mowing. He did not succeed very well.

“What is the matter, Dan?” asked his father.

“My scythe does not hang well,” answered Dan, an answer which will be understood by country boys.

His father took the scythe and tried to remedy the difficulty, but when it was handed back to Dan, it worked no better.

“I think you had better hang it to suit yourself, Dan,” said his father.

With a laughing face Dan hung it on the branch of a tree, and turning to his father said, “There, that is just right.”

On another occasion Judge Webster, on returning home, questioned the boys as to what they had been doing in his absence.

“What have you been doing, Ezekiel?” asked his father.

“Nothing, sir,” was the frank reply.

“And you, Daniel, what have you been doing?”

“Helping Zeke, sir.”

There is no doubt that Judge Webster was more indulgent than was usual in that day to his children, and more particularly to Daniel, of whose talents he was proud, and of whose future distinction he may have had in his mind some faint foreshadowing. This indulgence was increased by Dan’s early delicacy of constitution. At any rate, Daniel had in his father his best friend, not only kind but judicious, and perhaps the eminence he afterwards attained was due in part to the judicious management of the father, who earnestly sought to give him a good start in life.

While at Boscawan Dan found another circulating library, and was able to enlarge his reading and culture. Among the books which it contained was an English translation of Don Quixote, and this seems to have had a powerful fascination for the boy. “I began to read it,” he says in his autobiography, “and it is literally true that I never closed my eyes until I had finished it, nor did I lay it down, so great was the power of this extraordinary book on my imagination.”

Meanwhile Daniel was making rapid progress in his classical studies. He studied fitfully perhaps, but nevertheless rapidly. In the summer of 1797, at the age of fifteen, he was pronounced ready to enter college. His acquisitions were by no means extensive, for in those days colleges were content with a scantier supply of preparatory knowledge than now. In the ancient languages he had read the first six books of Virgil’s Æneid, Cicero’s four Orations against Catiline, a little Greek grammar, and the four Evangelists of the Greek Testament. In mathematics he had some knowledge of arithmetic, but knew nothing of algebra or geometry. He had read a considerable number of books, however, enough to give him a literary taste, but he was by no means a prodigy of learning. Yet, slender as were his acquirements, his school life was at an end, and the doors of Dartmouth College opened to receive its most distinguished son.

CHAPTER VII.

DANIEL’S COLLEGE LIFE

It is all important point in a boy’s life when he enters college. He leaves home, in most cases, and, to a greater extent than ever before, he is trusted to order his own life and rely upon his own judgment. It is a trying ordeal, and many fail to pass through it creditably. A student who has plenty of money is in greater danger of wasting his time from the enlarged opportunities of enjoyment which money can buy. From this danger, at least, Daniel was free. His father found it hard enough to pay his ordinary expenses, and it is hardly likely that the boy ever had much spare money to spend on pleasure.

Besides, though only fifteen, Daniel already possessed a gravity and earnestness not often to be found in much older students. These, however, were blended with a humor and love of fun which contributed to make him an agreeable companion for his fellow-students.

Daniel’s development was not rapid. The oak tree grows steadily, but in rapidity of growth it is eclipsed by many trees of less importance. The great powers which our hero exhibited in after life did not at once make themselves manifest. He did not at once take his place proudly at the head of his class. This is shown by the fact that at the Sophomore exhibition neither of the two principal appointments was assigned to him. Notwithstanding this, it may safely be asserted that his time was well spent. In this connection I am sure my young readers will be interested in reading the testimony of Professor Shortliff.

“Mr. Webster, while in college,” writes the professor, “was remarkable for his steady habits, his intense application to study, and his punctual attendance upon all the prescribed exercises. I know not that he was absent from a recitation, or from morning and evening prayers in the chapel, or from public worship on the Sabbath; and I doubt if ever a smile was seen upon his face during any religious exercise. He was always in his place, and with a decorum suited to it. He had no collision with any one, nor appeared to enter into the concerns of others, but emphatically minded his own business. But, as steady as the sun, he pursued with intense application the great object for which he came to college.”

This is certainly high praise, and I am afraid such words could hardly be said with truth of the majority of the college students of to-day. Conscientious devotion to duty is often set down by college students as indicating a lack of proper spirit, and the punctilious scholar is often stigmatized as a toady, who is trying to curry favor with the Faculty. Daniel, however, understood very well how important to his future success was his improvement of the advantages which his father’s self-sacrifice had purchased for him. Judge Webster was obliged to mortgage his house and farm to meet the expenses incurred by Daniel’s education, and he would indeed have been most reprehensible if he had not constantly borne this in mind.

To go into details, Daniel’s favorite studies were the Latin and Greek classics. He was but slenderly versed in these languages when he entered college, and the college course was not as advanced as it is at Dartmouth to-day. The first year, and part of the second, was devoted to authors and studies which now receive attention before entrance. For instance, the Freshman class went on with the Seventh Book of the Æneid and with the remainder of the Greek Testament, arithmetic was continued, and algebra was begun. While he was not below the average in mathematics, Daniel certainly did not excel in that department. It is related of Charles Sumner that he made strenuous efforts to become a good mathematical scholar in spite of, perhaps because of, his conscious distaste for that important branch, but without marked success. General reading and composition always attracted him, and he was probably one of the best read students at the time in college. He devoted his leisure hours to extensive readings in poetry, history and criticism. His powerful and retentive memory made this voluntary course of especial value, and years later there were times when he was able to make happy and striking quotations from authors he had not read since his college life.

It is quite certain that Daniel at this time had no path marked out for his future life, yet he probably could not have made a more profitable preparation for that which actually lay before him than that which he was unconsciously making. The history of England and of his own country especially interested him, not alone the history of outward events, but the constitutional history. From the age of eight he had been familiar with the Constitution of the United States, read for the first time as printed on the cheap cotton handkerchief, of which mention has already been made. He never ceased to study it, and he well deserved the title sometimes given him of Expounder and Defender of the Constitution.

At that time, as at present, it was the custom for the students to form societies, in which debates and other literary exercises were the principal features of the periodical meetings. Towards the middle of his college course Daniel joined “The United Fraternity,” then the leading society in college. He had long since overcome the diffidence which at Exeter prevented him from participating in the exercise of declamation. In the society he became distinguished both as a writer and debater, and ere long ranked in the general estimation as the best writer and speaker in college. So far as he exhibited precocity in anything he showed it in these two branches. His method of preparation, for he always prepared himself when he proposed to speak, is described by a classmate as follows: “He was accustomed to arrange his thoughts in his mind in his room or his private walks, and to put them upon paper just before the exercise would be called for. When he was required to speak at two o’clock, he would frequently begin to write after dinner, and when the bell rang he would fold his paper, put it in his pocket and go in, and speak with great ease. In his movements he was rather slow and deliberate, except when his feelings were aroused; then his whole soul would kindle into a flame.”

As this was the formative period when young Webster’s intellectual character was taking shape; as, moreover, he was still a boy in years, no older than many who will read this book, I add another tribute to his industry in college and the ability which he displayed. It is from a letter written by Hon. Henry Hubbard to Prof. Sanborn.

“I entered the Freshman class in 1799,” writes Mr. Hubbard, “at the early age of fourteen. I was two years in college with Mr. Webster. When I first went to Hanover I found his reputation already established as the most remarkable young man in the college. He was, I believe, so decidedly beyond any one else that no other student of his class was ever spoken of as second to him. I was led, very soon, to appreciate most highly his scholarship and attainments. As a student his acquisitions seemed to me to be very extensive. Every subject appeared to contribute something to his intellectual stores. He acquired knowledge with remarkable facility. He seemed to grasp the meaning and substance of a book almost by intuition. Others toiled long and patiently for that which he acquired at a glance.

“As a scholar, I should say that he was then distinguished for the uncommon extent of his knowledge, and for the ease with which he acquired it. But I should say that I was more impressed by his eloquence and power as a speaker, before the society of which we were both members, than by his other qualifications, however superior to others. There was a completeness and fullness in his views, and a force and expressiveness in his manner of presenting them, which no other student possessed. We used to listen to him with the deepest interest and respect, and no one thought of equaling the vigor and glow of his eloquence. The oration which he delivered before the United Fraternity on the day of his graduation is, I think, now among the records of that society. Whoever will read it at this late day, and bring to mind the appearance of the author, his manner and power, during its delivery, cannot fail to admit that I have said no more of his eloquence than I was warranted in saying. The students, and those who knew him best and judged him most impartially, felt that no one connected with the college deserved to be compared with him at the time he received his first degree. His habits and moral character were entirely unimpeachable. I never heard them questioned during our college acquaintance.”

After this testimony I am certainly justified in holding up Daniel Webster, during his college life, as a fit model for all young men who at this day are placed in similar circumstances and pursuing a similar course.

CHAPTER VIII.

DANIEL RECEIVES SOME VALUABLE ADVICE

Peter Harvey, in his interesting volume of “Reminiscences of Daniel Webster,” relates many incidents for which he was indebted to the free and friendly communications of Mr. Webster himself. One of these I will transfer to my pages, as it will be likely to amuse my young readers. I can do no better than quote it without alteration from Mr. Harvey’s book.

“Mr. Webster was once telling me about a plain-spoken neighbor of his father, whose sons were schoolmates of his own. The neighbor had moved into the neighborhood of Hanover, where he had opened a little clearing, and had settled upon a piece of comparatively barren land. After Daniel had been in college several months his father said to him,

“‘John Hanson is away up there somewhere. I should like to know how he is getting along. I think you had better find him out, and go and see him.’

“So Daniel inquired about, and soon found out pretty nearly where Hanson lived.

“‘One Saturday afternoon,’ related Mr. Webster, ’I thought I would trudge up there through the woods, and spend Sunday with my old friends. After a long, tedious walk I began to think I should never find the place; but I finally did, and when I got there I was pretty well tired out with climbing, jumping over logs, and so on. The family were not less delighted than surprised to see me, but they were as poor as Job’s cat. They were reduced to the last extreme of poverty, and their house contained but one apartment, with a rude partition to make two rooms.

“’I saw how matters were; but it was too late to go back, and they seemed really glad to see me. They confessed to me that they had not even a cow, or any potatoes. The only thing they had to eat was a bundle of green grass and a little hog’s lard, and they actually subsisted on this grass fried in the hog’s fat. But it was not so bad after all. They fried up a great platter of it, and I made my supper and breakfast off it. About a year and a half afterwards, just before graduating, I thought that, before leaving Hanover, I would go and pay another visit to the Hansons. I found that they had improved somewhat, for they now had a cow and plenty of plain, homely fare. I spent the night there, and was about to leave the next morning, when Hanson said to me,

“’“Well, Daniel, you are about to graduate. You’ve got through college, and have got college larnin’, and now, what are you going to do with it?”

“’I told him I had not decided on a profession.

“’“Well,” said he, “you are a good boy; your father was a kind man to me, and was always kind to the poor. I should like to do a kind turn to him and his. You’ve got through college, and people that go through college either become ministers, or doctors, or lawyers. As for bein’ a minister I would never think of doin’ that; they never get paid anything. Doctorin’ is a miserable profession; they live upon other people’s ailin’s, are up nights, and have no peace. And as for bein’ a lawyer, I would never propose that to anybody. Now,” said he, “Daniel, I’ll tell you what! You are a boy of parts; you understand this book-larnin’, and you are bright. I knew a man who had college larnin’ down in Rye, where I lived when I was a boy. That man was a conjurer; he could tell by consultin’ his books and study if a man had lost his cow where she was. That was a great thing, and if people lost anything, they would think nothin’ of payin’ three or four dollars to a man like that, so as to find their property. There is not a conjurer within a hundred miles of this place; and you are a bright boy, and have got this college larnin’. The best thing you can do, Daniel, is to study that, and be a conjurer!”’”

We can imagine the serious, earnest tone in which this advice was given, and we may easily suppose that Daniel found it hard not to laugh when the climax was reached. We can hardly imagine the advice to have been taken. If, in place of Daniel Webster, the great lawyer, and the defender of the Constitution, we had Daniel Webster, the famous conjurer, it would be a ludicrous transformation. There are few persons who do not consider themselves qualified to give advice, but when my young readers are advised about the serious business of life, let them consider whether the advice comes from one who is qualified by wisdom and good judgment to give it.

CHAPTER IX.

BROTHERLY LOVE

Daniel’s path seemed to lie plain before him. He was a college student, receiving and using such advantages as Dartmouth could give him. At nineteen he would be a graduate, and well qualified to commence a professional course. So far as he was concerned Daniel felt that he had reason to congratulate himself. But there was another for whom he began to feel solicitude.

Ezekiel Webster was nearly two years older than Daniel, and like him possessed uncommon natural gifts. A strong affection had united the two brothers from their earliest years. There was no reason, apart from Judge Webster’s poverty, why Ezekiel, as well as his younger brother, should not be allowed a college education. But the father hesitated long before he ventured to offer Daniel the education which he longed to give him, and to raise the necessary money was obliged to mortgage his humble house. His plan for Ezekiel was that he should remain at home and carry on the farm. As he grew older, and hard work had made him in his own words “old before his time,” he felt that it would be a relief to have a son like Ezekiel to take the burden from his shoulders, and keep up the farm. But Ezekiel scarcely more than Daniel had a vocation for farming. He too had a thirst for learning, and felt that a farmer’s life would be uncongenial. It is natural that he should have felt dissatisfied with his prospects, and that the claims of Duty which he recognized should nevertheless have seemed to him difficult to obey.

Such was the state of feeling when Daniel came home on a vacation. To him Ezekiel revealed his thoughts and inward struggles.

“I ought to stay, Daniel,” he said; “now that you are away father needs me more than ever, but I can’t bear the idea of growing up in ignorance, with no work more elevating than working on the farm.”

Daniel was touched. He could see how unequal their lots were likely to be. While he might be a successful lawyer, his favorite brother, whose talents he considered to equal his own, would have to toil on the barren acres of their paternal farm.

“I can’t bear the idea, either, Zeke,” he answered. “You are sacrificing yourself to me. Father has mortgaged the farm to pay my expenses, and you are working to pay it.”

“If but one of us can have an education, Dan, I am glad that you are that one.”

“But, Zeke, you are as smart as I, nay, smarter, and ought to have the same advantages.”

“It cannot be, Daniel. I know that well enough. If I could be spared to leave home I should like to go out West. In a new part of the country I should have a better chance of getting on than here. Here on our barren little farm there is no chance to do better than get a bare living.”

“I wish you could go to college too. Isn’t there some way of managing it?”

“I have thought of it many times, but I see no way,” answered Ezekiel despondently.

“May I mention the subject to father, Zeke?”

“It would only trouble him, and after all it would do no good.”

All night long the two brothers talked the matter over, and finally Zeke gave his consent to Dan’s broaching the subject to their father. The result I will give in Daniel’s words.

“I ventured on the negotiation, and it was carried, as other things often are, by the earnest and sanguine manner of youth. I told him [Judge Webster] that I was unhappy at my brother’s prospects. For myself I saw my way to knowledge, respectability and self-protection; but as to him, all looked the other way; that I would keep school, and get along as well as I could, be more than four years in getting through college, if necessary, provided he also could be sent to study. He said at once he lived but for his children; that he had but little, and on that little he put no value, except so far as it might be useful to them; that to carry us both through college would take all he was worth; that, for himself, he was willing to run the risk, but that this was a serious matter to our mother and two unmarried sisters; that we must settle the matter with them, and if their consent was obtained, he would trust to Providence, and get along as well as he could.”

So the matter was referred to Mrs. Webster, and she showed a devotion equal to that exhibited by her husband. Though she knew that the education of both of her boys would take the balance of their little property, she never hesitated. “I will trust the boys,” she answered promptly.

Her confidence was not misplaced. She lived long enough to rejoice in the success of both sons, and to find a happy and comfortable home with Ezekiel. Nothing in the life of Daniel Webster is more beautiful than the devotion of the parents to their children, and the mutual affection which existed between them.

CHAPTER X.

THE TWO BROTHERS

Ezekiel was worthy of the sacrifices his parents made for him. If he was not the equal of Daniel in ability, he was still remarkable, and in time reached high rank as a lawyer in his native State. He was a man grown, and nearly a man in years, when his new plan of life was formed. He was close upon twenty years of age, a young man of striking appearance, “an improved edition of his father in form and features,” but thus far he had had only such educational advantages as were afforded by the common schools of his native town. But a small academy had been established in Salisbury, and of this he enrolled himself as a pupil. He remained here for two years, beginning the Latin grammar, for it was necessary, notwithstanding his age, to begin at the lowest round of the ladder.