Famous American Statesmen

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Daniel had little opportunity for schooling in those early years. He says, in his autobiography, "I do not remember when or by whom I was taught to read, because I cannot, and never could, recollect a time when I could not read the Bible. I suppose I was taught by my mother, or by my elder sisters. My father seemed to have no higher object in the world than to educate his children to the full extent of his very limited ability. No means were within his reach, generally speaking, but the small town-schools. These were kept by teachers, sufficiently indifferent, in the several neighborhoods of the township, each a small part of the year. To these I was sent with the other children.... In these schools nothing was taught but reading and writing; and as to these, the first I generally could perform better than the teacher, and the last a good master could hardly instruct me in; writing was so laborious, irksome, and repulsive an occupation to me always."

Much of the boy's time was spent in rambles along the Merrimac river, formed by the Winnipiseogee and the Pemigewasset, "the beau ideal of a mountain stream; cold, noisy, winding, and with banks of much picturesque beauty." He loved to fish along the streams, having for company an old British soldier and sailor, Robert Wise. "He was," says Webster, "my Isaac Walton. He had a wife but no child. He loved me, because I would read the newspapers to him, containing the accounts of battles in the European wars. When I have read to him the details of the victories of Howe and Jervis, etc., I remember he was excited almost to convulsions, and would relieve his excitement by a gush of exulting tears. He finally picked up a fatherless child, took him home, sent him to school, and took care of him, only, as he said, that he might have some one to read the newspaper to him. He could never read himself. Alas, poor Robert! I have never so attained the narrative art as to hold the attention of others as thou, with thy Yorkshire tongue, hast held mine. Thou hast carried me many a mile on thy back, paddled me over and over and up and down the stream, and given whole days in aid of my boyish sports, and asked no meed but that, at night, I would sit down at thy cottage door, and read to thee some passage of thy country's glory!"

Daniel heard of battles from another source beside Robert Wise. In the long winter evenings, when the family were snow-bound, Captain Webster would tell stories of the Revolutionary War, and the boy grew patriotic, as he heard of the brave soldiers who died to bring freedom to unborn generations. When he was eight years old, with all the money at his command, twenty-five cents, he went into a little shop "and bought," as he says, "a small cotton pocket-handkerchief, with the Constitution of the United States printed on its two sides. From this I learned either that there was a Constitution, or that there were thirteen States. I remember to have read it, and have known more or less of it ever since." Years afterward he said, "that there was not an article, a section, a clause, a phrase, a word, a syllable, or even a comma, of that Constitution, which he had not studied and pondered in every relation and in every construction of which it was susceptible."

How important a part this twenty-five cent handkerchief played in the lives of the two Webster boys! There is no soil so mellow as that of a child's mind; it needs no enriching save love that warms it like sunshine. What is planted there early, grows rank and tall, and mothers do most of the planting.

The lad's reading in these boyish days was confined mostly to the "Spectator," and Pope's "Essay on Man." The whole of the latter he learned to repeat. "We had so few books," he says, "that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart." The yearly almanac was regarded as "an acquisition." Once when Ezekiel and he had a dispute, after retiring, as to a couplet at the head of the April page, Daniel got up, groped his way to the kitchen, lighted a candle, looked at the quotation, found himself in the wrong, and went back to bed. But he had inadvertently, at two o'clock at night in midwinter, set the house on fire, which was saved by his father's presence of mind. Daniel said, "They were in pursuit of light, but got more than they wanted."

Exceedingly fond of poetry, at twelve he could repeat many of the hymns of Dr. Watts. Later, he found delight in Don Quixote, of which he says, "I began to read it, 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 that extraordinary book on my imagination." Later still, Milton, Shakespeare, and the Bible became his inspiration.

Years after, he used to say, "I have read through the entire Bible many times. I now make it a practice to go through it once a year. It is the book of all others for lawyers as well as for divines; and I pity the man that cannot find in it a rich supply of thought, and of rules for his conduct. It fits man for life—it prepares him for death!"

Captain Webster had secretly nourished the thought that he should send Daniel to college, but he was not a man to awaken false hopes, so he made no mention of his thoughts. An incident related by Daniel shows his father's heart in the matter. "Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the last years of Washington's administration, I was making hay with my father. About the middle of the forenoon, the Honorable Abiel Foster, who lived in Canterbury, six miles off, called at the house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a worthy man, college-learned, and had been a minister, and was not a person of any considerable natural power. He talked a while in the field and went on his way. When he was gone, my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the elm, on a haycock. He said, 'My son, that is a worthy man; he is a member of Congress; he goes to Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a day, while I toil here. It is because he had an education, which I never had. If I had had his early education, I should have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near it as it was. But I missed it, and now I must work here.' 'My dear father,' said I, 'you shall not work. Brother and I shall work for you, and will wear our hands out, and you shall rest.' And I remember to have cried, and I cry now at the recollection. 'My child,' said he, 'it is of no importance to me. I now live but for my children. I could not give your elder brothers the advantages of knowledge, but I can do something for you. Exert yourself, improve your opportunities, learn, learn, and, when I am gone, you will not need to go through the hardships which I have undergone, and which have made me an old man before my time.'"

Daniel never forgot those precious words, "Improve your opportunities, learn, learn." The next year, 1796, he went to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he found ninety boys. He had come with his plain clothes from his plain home, while many of the others had come from rich and aristocratic families. Sometimes the boys ridiculed his country ways and country dress. Little they knew of the future that was to give them some slight renown simply because they happened to be in the same class with this country lad! When will the world learn not to judge a person by his clothes! When the first term at Exeter was near its close, the usher, Nicholas Emery, afterward an eminent lawyer in Portland, Maine, said to Webster, "You may stop a few minutes after school: I wish to speak to you." He then told the lad that he was a better scholar than any in his class, that he learned more readily and easily, and that if he returned to school he should be put into a higher class, and not be hindered by boys who cared more for play and dress than for solid improvement.

"These were the first truly encouraging words," said Mr. Webster, "that I ever received with regard to my studies. I then resolved to return, and pursue them with diligence and so much ability as I possessed." Blessings on thee, Nicholas Emery! Strange that either from indifference, or what we think the world will say, we forget to speak a helpful or an encouraging word. True appreciation is not flattery.