From Farm Boy to Senator

I am tempted to insert here, on the authority of an Exeter correspondent of the Chicago Advance, an anecdote of Daniel at this period which will interest my young readers:

“When Daniel Webster’s father found that his son was not robust enough to make a successful farmer, he sent him to Exeter to prepare for college, and found a home for him among a number of other students in the family of ‘old Squire Clifford,’ as we of a younger generation had always heard him called. Daniel had up to this time led only the secular life of a country farmer’s boy, and, though the New Hampshire farmers have sent out many heroes as firm and true as the granite rocks in the pasture, there cannot be among the hard and homely work which such a life implies the little finenesses of manner which good society demands. Daniel was one of these diamonds of the first water, but was still in the rough, and needed some cutting and polishing to fit him to shine in the great world in which he was to figure so conspicuously.

“None saw this more clearly than the sensible old Squire. The boy had one habit at table of which the Squire saw it would be a kindness to cure him. When not using his knife and fork he was accustomed to hold them upright in his fists, on either side of his plate. Daniel was a bashful boy of very delicate feelings, and the Squire feared to wound him by speaking to him directly on the subject. So he called aside one of the other students with whom he had been longer acquainted, and told him his dilemma. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I want you this noon at the table to hold up your knife and fork as Daniel does. I will speak to you about it, and we will see if the boy does not take a hint for himself.’

“The young man consented to be the scapegoat for his fellow-student, and several times during the meal planted his fists on the table, with his knife and fork as straight as if he had received orders to present arms. The Squire drew his attention to his position, courteously begged his pardon for speaking of the matter, and added a few kind words on the importance of young men correcting such little habits before going out into the world. The student thanked him for his interest and advice, and promised reform, and Daniel’s knife and fork were never from that day seen elevated at table.”

CHAPTER VI.

PREPARING FOR COLLEGE

After nine months spent at Exeter Daniel was withdrawn by his father, not from any dissatisfaction with the school or with the pupil’s progress, but probably for economical reasons. Judge Webster was a poor man, and though the charges at Exeter at that time were very moderate they were a heavy draft upon the good father’s purse. But Dan was not taken back to farm-work. He was allowed to continue his classical studies, but under different auspices.

In the town of Boscawan, only six miles off, the minister, Rev. Samuel Wood, was noted for his success in preparing boys for college. His charges, too, were wonderfully low. For board and instruction he only charged one dollar per week, which leads us to infer either that provisions were very cheap, or that boys had less appetite than is the case now. At any rate, the low price was a great inducement to Dan’s father.

“Dan,” he said, soon after the boy came, “do you wish to continue your studies?”

“Yes, father, if you are willing.”

“I am not only willing but desirous that you should do so. I intend to place you with Rev. Mr. Wood, of Boscawen.”

Daniel knew of Mr. Wood’s reputation as a teacher, and the prospect did not displease him.

Still his father had not announced the plan he had in view for him.

One cold winter day, when the snow lay deep on the ground, Judge Webster and Dan started for the house of his future teacher. As they were ascending a hill slowly through deep snows the Judge, who had for some time been silent, said, “Dan, I may as well tell you what plan I have in view for you. I shall ask Mr. Wood to prepare you for college, and I will let you enter at Dartmouth as soon as you are ready.”

Daniel could not speak for emotion. He knew what a sacrifice it would involve for his father with his straitened means to carry through such a plan as that, and his heart was full. As he himself says, “A warm glow ran all over me, and I laid my head on my father’s shoulder and wept.”

I am afraid that some boys—possibly some of my young readers—have received a similar announcement from their fathers with quite different feelings.

We are to imagine Dan, then, an inmate of the minister’s family, pursuing his studies with success, but with less of formal restraint than when he was a pupil at Exeter. Indeed I shall not attempt to conceal the fact that occasionally Dan’s love of sport, and particularly of fishing, drew him away from his studies, and led him to incur the good doctor’s remonstrances.

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