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in what he calls "the philosophy of streams," which he continued, at intervals, to note from those banks for fifty years.' Then, also, he must have acquired that strong love of agriculture which never left him; for at no period of his life, after boyhood, could he have seen much of practical farming, until he became possessed of his father's property; and I imagine that this is not a propensity which educated men often acquire after they have become cultivated and busy men of the world. In this easy and expanding life, overcoming, each year, something of the ailments of his childhood, he grew to be fourteen years of age, and imbibed most of those tastes which ever afterward drew him, when he could release himself from contact with man, into the closest communion with Nature.

In this period also we are to find the early influences which gave a peculiar tinge and fervor to his patriotic feelings-feelings that always carried his love of country, by emotions whose sources lay deep in an emotional nature, to the history of what had been done and suffered in order to make a country. For we are to remember that at his paternal fireside sat and talked, in the long winter evenings, one who had been an actor, first in the great war by which our fathers helped the crown of England to extinguish the power of France on this continent, and then in that other war for independence, by which the unrequited and misgoverned provinces severed themselves from the parent state. Whoever seeks to know what it was in the formation of the character of Daniel Webster that gave such a glow to the eloquence, and such a breadth to the patriotism of his after-years, whenever and wherever American history connected itself with American nationality, must go back to that fireside, and listen in imagination to the tales which his young heart drank from his father's lips.

Finally, we must go to this period as the time when the religious tendencies, which Nature had implanted in his temperament, received their first impulses and their early development. Whatever may have been his imperfections or his failings, his religious feelings were always deep and fervent; and in all the successes or vicissitudes or sorrows of his life, they

1 Letter to Mr. Blatchford, ut supra.

grew stronger and stronger to the hour of his death. All that need now be said of the special form of Christian faith under which his childhood was passed is, that it was doubtless that which was derived from the Puritans. But its spirit, as it provailed in his father's house and in his father's life, is all comprehended in two emphatic words, which he applied to his parent, and which described him as "religious, but not sour."'

What he had learned of books, at this time, we are partly told by himself in his autobiography. A small circulating library had been established in the neighborhood by his father and other persons, and among the books which he obtained from it was the Spectator. Fond of poetry, he went at once to the criticism on Chevy Chase, for the sake of the verses which are cited. "I could not understand," he says, "why it was necessary that the author of the Spectator should take such great pains to prove that Chevy Chase was a good story; that was the last thing I doubted." Of other poetry, he knew the psalms and hymns of Dr. Watts; and he informs us that he could repeat them at ten or twelve years of age. There never was, in truth, a time in his subsequent life when he could not repeat them, as many can attest who have heard him do so with

1" He had in him," says Mr. Webster, what I collect to have been the character of some of the old Puritans. He was deeply religious, but not sour. On the contrary, good-humored, facetious, showing even in his age, with a contagious laugh, teeth all as white as alabaster, gentle, soft, playful, and yet having a heart in him that he seemed to have borrowed from a lion. He could frown-a frown it was but cheerful ness, good-humor, and smiles composed his most usual aspect."-(Letter to R. M. Blatchford, Esq., May 3, 1846. spondence, vol. ii., p. 227.)

Corre

Mr. Nesmith relates the following specimen of his humor: He had a nephew, Stephen Bohonon by name, who had been a soldier in his company at West Point, and afterward lived at the "South Road" village, in Salisbury. One day, having some business with his nephew, he went to this village, and found him teaching the young people of the neighborhood to dance. He entered the hall where the dancing was going on, and, after waiting a short time, finished

his business with his nephew, and returned home. Soon the rumor was circulated that Judge Webster had been seen in a dancing-hall. A member of his church entered a complaint, requiring satisfaction for this reproach. Parson Worcester suggested a written acknowledgment. Judge Webster replied that he would put nothing on file, but that he would make an oral confession before the congregation. Accordingly, on the next Sunday, after the forenoon exercises were closed, he rose in his place, and said: "A few days since, I had some business with my nephew, Stephen Bohonon; went up to his house, found him in the hall of the tavern, instructing the youth in dancing. They were in the midst of a dance when I entered the hall. I took a seat, and waited until the dance was closed; took the earliest opportunity to do my errand with Stephen; found the young people civil and orderly; saw nothing improper. Now, if, in all this, I have offended any of my weaker brethren, I am sorry for it."-(New-Hampshire Statesman.)

singular felicity, sometimes with a serious and sometimes with a humorous application. No other sacred poetry ever appeared to him so affecting and devout.

He also read, at this time, Pope's "Essay on Man,” and learned to repeat the whole of it. This was done systematically; for, he says, "we had so few books, that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart." But with a fondness of recollection, that will cause all who remember the arrival of a new year's almanac in such a home to understand him when he pronounces it "an acquisition," he relates how he one night rose from his bed, after a dispute with Ezekiel about a couplet of poetry at the head of the April page in the new annual, groped his way to the kitchen, lighted a candle, and went to find the little pamphlet in a distant room. He reached the object of his search, ascertained that he was wrong in his quotation, returned to his chamber, blew out his candle, and went to bed. But, in his literary eagerness, he had come very near burning down the house. A spark from the candle had set fire to some cotton clothes in the room where the almanac had been left, and where his maternal grandmother, of the age of eighty, was sleeping. The flames had caught some of the furniture, and even part of the woodwork of the room. Luckily, he saw the light before he fell asleep. It was at two o'clock in the morning, and in midwinter; and winter in New Hampshire is no genial season. He sprang from his bed, and roused the family by a sharp cry. His father's presence of mind saved the house.

Beyond such acquisitions as were made at home, and the very little that he obtained at the town schools, he is not known to have had any other learning down to the time when his father determined to send him away for other advantages. But I must not leave this period of his first school-days without mentioning his masters, whose names have been rescued from oblivion by their connection with his, and by his affectionate fidelity to all early associations. Two of them were Thomas Chase and James Tappan. Of neither of these pedagogues, however, could it probably be said that the neighbors were much astonished by what they carried in their heads.

The good folk of Salisbury were well aware that there were

institutions and teachers not far off, that could do rather more for their children, when the time came, than Master Chase or Master Tappan. But the district schools of New England have been, from the first, the intellectual nurseries of the land; and it was in these that the two worthies above named dispensed such food for infant minds as they had to give. It is related of Thomas Chase, by Mr. Everett, I presume on Mr. Webster's authority, that he could read tolerably well, and wrote a good hand, but that spelling was not his forte.' As Mr. Webster was but three or four years old when he attended Master Chase, the orthography of the teacher was not perhaps of the last impor tance. Tappan came after him, and had somewhat higher qualifications. He lived to a very advanced age, to be always tenderly remembered by his pupil, and to receive from him more substantial tokens of affectionate recognition than the words, however graceful and touching they were, that came to the aged teacher from a pen whose faculty of expressing sympathy and kindness and consolation was scarcely less than its power to address and control the understandings of men.

There was also a third master, whose name Mr. Webster has commemorated in an especial manner, in connection with the first time that he ever saw a copy of the Constitution of the United States. This was William Hoyt, who taught the school in Salisbury for many years, and who also fulfilled the function of keeping a small shop. Mr. Webster has not directly said that he attended Hoyt's school, but, from his account of him, it is no doubt to be inferred that he did:

"William Hoyt was for many years teacher of our country school in Salisbury. I do not call it village school, because there was at that time no village; and boys came to school in the winter, the only season in which schools were usually open, from distances of several miles, wading through the snow or running upon its crust, with their curly heads of hair often whitened with frost from their own breath. I knew William Hoyt well, and every truant knew.' He was an austere man, but a good teacher of children. He had been a printer in Newburyport, wrote a very fair and excellent hand, was a good reader, and did teach boys, that which so few masters can or will do, to read well themselves. Beyond this, and perhaps a very slight knowledge of grammar, his attainments did not

1 Biographical Memoir, Works, vol. i., xxi.

extend. He had brought with him into the town a little property, which he took very good care of. He rather loved money; of all the cases of nouns, preferring the possessive. He also kept a little shop for the sale of various commodities, in the house exactly over the way from this. I do not know how old I was, but I remember having gone into his shop one day, and bought 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. William Hoyt and his wife lie buried in the graveyard under our eye, on my farm, near the graves of my own family. He left no children. I suppose that this little handkerchief was purchased about the time I was eight years old, as I remember listening to the conversation of my father and Mr. Thompson upon political events which happened in the year

1 יי.1790

About the year 1791, his father, who had been a member of both Houses of the State Legislature at various times, was made a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the county in which he lived. It was the practice in New Hampshire, at that day, to constitute this court by the appointment of a lawyer as presiding judge, and to associate with him two assistant judges, who were generally called "side justices." The latter were commonly selected from among the substantial farmers. They sat in court at the trial of causes; and, as all the judges had the right, if they chose to exercise it, to sum up the case to the jury, the several members of the court might differ on the law, as well as the jury on the facts. There, was, however, much business transacted at those courts which was not strictly judicial, but rather administrative and prudential, relating to the affairs of the county, and requiring strong good sense, integrity of purpose, and activity of mind-qualities which Judge Webster pos

1 Memorandum dictated to Mr. Blatchford, at Franklin, October 29, 1850.(Correspondence, ii., 398.)

It was a good deal the practice in the latter part of the last, and the beginning of the present century, to print such documents on the cotton handkerchiefs sold through the country. Many of my readers will remember the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, as well as the Constitution, so printed. It may have been a rude, but it was a happy thought, with whomsoever it originated. Paper was

dear; and a cotton handkerchief could be made and printed for a few cents. But I fear that, however durable may have been the impression produced by a few readings on the mind of such a boy as Daniel Webster, the impression of the types on his pocket-handkerchief could not have lasted long after its first immersion in water. My own recollec tion of these specimens of our infant manufactures is, that they were very attractive to the youthful mind, but that the housewives generally held that they "wouldn't wash."

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