When the farmers, on their way to market, drove past Judge Webster's house, they were always glad if they could see the delicate boy, with his great dark eyes.
If it was near the hour of noon, they would stop their teams under the shady elms and ask him to come out and read to them. Then, while their horses rested and ate, they would sit round the boy and listen to his wonderful tones as he read page after page from the Bible.
There were no children's books in those times. Indeed, there were very few books to be had of any kind. But young Daniel Webster found nothing too hard to read.
"I read what I could get to read," he afterwards said; "I went to school when I could, and when not at school, was a farmer's youngest boy, not good for much for want of health and strength, but expected to do something."
One day the man who kept the little store in the village, showed him something that made his heart leap.
It was a cotton handkerchief with the Constitution of the United States printed on one side of it.
In those days people were talking a great deal about the Constitution, for it had just then come into force.
Daniel had never read it. When he saw the handkerchief he could not rest till he had made it his own.
He counted all his pennies, he borrowed a few from his brother Ezekiel.
Then he hurried back to the store and bought the wished-for treasure.
In a short time he knew everything in the Constitution, and could repeat whole sections of it from memory. We shall learn that, when he afterwards became one of the great men of this nation, he proved to be the Constitution's wisest friend and ablest defender.