Daniel remained nine months at Exeter. Though he did not win reputation as a declaimer, he made his mark as a scholar. When he was approaching the end of his first term the usher said one day, “Webster, you may stop a few minutes after school; I wish to speak to you.”
Daniel stopped, wondering whether in any way he had incurred censure.
When they were alone the usher said, “The term is nearly over. Are you coming back next term?”
Daniel hesitated. He enjoyed the advantages which the school afforded, but his feelings had been hurt at times by the looks of amusement directed at his rustic manners and ill-fitting garments.
The usher noticed his hesitation, and said, “You are doing yourself great credit. You are a better scholar than any in your class. If you come back next term I shall put you into a higher class.”
These encouraging words made the boy resolve to return, and regardless of ridicule pursue with diligence the path which had been marked out for him.
It would be rather interesting to read the thoughts of Daniel’s schoolmates when years afterwards they saw the boy whom they had ridiculed moving forward with rapid strides to the foremost place in the councils of state, as well as in the legal profession.
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.’