had never ranked with the first four appointments, and if Webster had selected in place of it the English oration which was offered to his choice, he would, by his own act, have placed himself second on the list of the college honors. This dilemma the faculty did not foresee, or did not appreciate.

As not unfrequently happens on these occasions, a great excitement followed among the members of the class. Several of them applied to be excused from speaking on the day of Commencement, and were excused. Webster was one of them. His friends did not claim that he was entitled to the Latin Oration; but they had marked him for their Valedictory Orator, and considered themselves aggrieved by the refusal of the faculty to intrust them with the appointment, according to an established usage. Webster himself was placed in too embarrassing a position toward his competitors to allow of his exercising the choice which the faculty had given him. Apparently he had no other feeling about the whole affair, for I find no trace in his correspondence of any bitterness toward the faculty or any one else; and his attachment to his Alma Mater, which never flagged, became historical, inspiring one of the grandest of his forensic efforts, when he was called upon, in less than twenty years afterward, to defend her interests and her chartered rights before the highest judicial tribunal in the country.

It is well observed by the gentleman, whose narrative I have followed, that the whole matter turns to Webster's honor, if he did nothing improper himself; and it is therefore incumbent on me to state that there is no foundation for the story of his having destroyed his diploma in disgust and anger after the Commencement exercises were over. If this rumor ever had so much origin as to be a college tradition, it is refuted by evidence that ought to be regarded as decisive; for it is certain that it was not heard of at Dartmouth at the time, or for several years afterward.'

The friendships which he

1 Dr. Merrill, his class - mate, from whose account I have taken the facts respecting the appointments, says of this story: "I never believed it, and probably never shall believe it, unless some person reports it directly from Webster himself, as one of the witnesses. I was an

formed, when in college, with

intimate friend and correspondent, and
continued to reside at the college for
three years, but never heard of the story
for more than a quarter of a century.'
(MSS.) The Rev. Elihu Smith, another
of his class-mates, said: "I have nc
doubt the report is false. I stood by

some of the members of his own class, and with two or three young men who were in other classes, were peculiarly strong, and lasted through his life. But perhaps my But perhaps my readers may be curious to know what associations he had with young persons of the other sex, and whether his heart, at this susceptible period, remained wholly his own. There was a small society of young ladies in Hanover, during his junior and senior years, with whom he and his college friends were on terms of intimacy. They appear, however, in his correspondence by their Christian names alone; and probably no diligence on my part, if I were to use it, after the lapse of sixty-five years, to acquire further information concerning them, would be rewarded with much success. But there was gayety in the little town of Hanover in those days, of that modest and moderate sort which consisted with the habits of a seat of learning, and of a religious community. An evening visit, or a social tea-table, a walk, or a drive, were matters of course; and young women could converse with young men without the necessary presence of a superintending eye or ear, because the young of both sexes, from the very purity of the atmosphere in which they were born and educated, and had always dwelt, were fit to be intrusted in a large degree with their own conduct. Hence it has often happened among us that the tenderest and most enduring of all ties have' been formed by our educated men at a very early age; and, however strangely it may sound elsewhere, it has been no uncommon occurrence, in all parts of our country, for a young man to leave college with his destiny fixed in at least one very important affair of life, rendering it necessary

his side when he received his degree with a graceful bow; and, such was my connection with him in our society affairs, that if he had destroyed it afterward, I should certainly have known it."-(Rev. E. Smith to Professor Sanborn, November 10, 1852. Correspondence, i., 46.) Mr. Webster's character and deportment in college, in regard to which the testimony is uniform, were entirely inconsistent with the perpetration of such an act. "No one," says Mr. Smith, "presumed to bring a railing accusation against him." The Honorable Samuel Fessenden, who entered Dartmouth College in 1803, and who personally knew many of

Mr. Webster's friends still remaining at Hanover, and who had a strong interest in him, from having been acquainted with him at Fryeburg, observed, in a letter written to one of the literary executors, in December, 1852: "I never heard of his resentment manifesting itself in tearing up his diploma."

To the remark made in the text, there is one exception. One of the ladies of this little circle, a distant connection of my own, is mentioned in his letters by her full name, Mary Wood. ward. She was a woman of much talent, and high character, but married unfortunately.

for him to hasten with all speed into a settled position in the world.

This did not happen, however, to Daniel Webster; and, after a close scrutiny of his most confidential letters, it is quite clear that, although he may have been a little interested, he escaped, on the whole, unharmed. Perhaps this was owing to the fact that there were two charmers when there should have been but one. That there were two, that he was a little in doubt, that they perplexed him and he them, and that it was chiefly fun and innocent frolic on all sides, is manifest enough. Possibly the dignity of my subject might have excluded this inchoate piece of romance. But as there were rumors which had their day, and he wrote about them half seriously and half playfully, the reader may as well see how he dismissed them. One of the young ladies whom he had most admired was, it would appear, a visitor from Salem; and he thus gives a characteristic close to a letter to his friend Bingham, written in the winter of his senior year:

"Salem! enchanting name! who would have thought that from the ashes of witches, hung a century ago, should have sprung such an arch coquette as should delight in sporting with the simplicity of

With respect to his own opinions about his college acquirements and standing, I find four occasions on which he said or wrote something directly, and the tenor of the whole is uniform. The first occurred in 1802, when he had been graduated only a year. It was observed to him that his scholarship in college had always been regarded as of the highest grade, which was not true of a gentleman then at the bar, whom he had expressed a hope of some day equalling in his professional career. He said:

It was

"Ay, but the opinion of my scholarship was a mistaken one. over-estimated. I will explain what I mean. Many other students read more than I did, and knew more than I did But so much as I read I made my own. When a half hour or an hour, at most, had elapsed, I closed my book, and thought over what I had read. If there was any thing peculiarly interesting or striking in the passage, I endeavored to recall it, and lay it up in my memory, and commonly could effect my object. Then, if, in debate or conversation afterward, any subject came

1 Correspondence, i., 87.

up on which I had read something, I could talk very easily so far as I had read, and then I was very careful to stop. Thus greater credit was given me for extensive and accurate knowledge than I really possessed.”1

The next occasion was in 1825, when he said:

"My Greek and mathematics were not great while I was in college, but I was better read in history and English generally than any of my class, and I was good in composition. My Latin was pretty strong too." "

In his autobiography he says:

"I was graduated in course, August, 1801. Owing to some difficulties -haec non meminisse juvat—I took no part in the Commencement exercises. I spoke an oration to the Society of the United Fraternity, which I suspect was a sufficiently boyish performance.

"My college life was not an idle one. Besides the regular attendance on prescribed duties and studies, I read something of English history and English literature. Perhaps my reading was too miscellaneous. I even paid my board for a year by superintending a little weekly newspaper, and making selections for it from books of literature and from the contemporary publications. I suppose I sometimes wrote a foolish paragraph myself. While in college, I delivered two or three occasional addresses, which were published. I trust they are forgotten; they were in very bad taste. I had not then learned that all true power in writing is in the idea, and not in the style, an error into which the Ars rhetorica, as it is usually taught, may easily lead stronger heads than mine."

In 1851, eighteen months before his death, writing to his class-mate, Dr. Merrill, he said:

"I assure you, my dear old friend, that I hear from you with pleasure. You are no shepherd, and certainly I am no king. But we are friends, born in the same country, about the same age, and educated at the same college. We embraced different professions, which we have pursued now for a long time; and Providence has graciously blessed us both with a great share of health and happiness. At our time of life the mind often turns to the past. I find that I think now, much more frequently than twenty or thirty years ago, on college scenes and college friends. I look over the catalogue, call to mind the dead, and inquire after the living. I well remember that I did not keep up with you in the stated course of colegiate exercises. Your lessons were better learned, and you were a great favorite with Professor Smith and the other members of the authority,'

1 Letter from J. W. McGaw, Esq., to Professor Sanborn, November, 16, 1852. -(Correspondence, i., 51.) Mr. McGaw was a young lawyer at Fryeburg, Maine, when Mr. Webster resided there as

teacher of an academy, and they lived much together.

2 Ticknor MSS.; notes of the conver sation on the drive to Salem.

8 Correspondence, i., 11.

from the exact punctuality of all your performances. I believe I was less industrious; at any rate, I indulged more in general reading, and my attainments, if I made any, were not such as told for much in the recitation-room. After leaving college, I caught up,' as the boys say, pretty well in Latin; but in college, and afterward, I left Greek to Loveland, and mathematics to Shattuck. Would that I had pursued Greek till I could read and understand Demosthenes in his own language!"

6

From youth to age did he thus always speak when he spoke of himself; with that moderation and modesty, that delicacy toward others, that unwillingness to advance pretensions, which are the characteristics of true greatness, and which, in him, were unmingled with condescension or affectation. If we take the sum of his own testimony, and enlarge it by that of others who knew him at Dartmouth, and who could say what he could not say, adding also what we can learn from such of his writings as have survived from that time, we find that he left the institution with but a small amount of Greek, but very well grounded in Latin; that his acquisitions in English history and English literature were extensive; that his powers as an orator were already developed to a degree rarely witnessed in a young man of nineteen; that his style of writing was flowing and easy, but far from that chaste, compact, and perspicuous manner which he afterward attained; that he had become already a practised debater; that his faculty for labor was something prodigious, his memory disciplined by methods not taught him by others, and that his intellect was expanded far beyond his years. He was abstemious, religious, of the highest sense of honor, and of the most elevated deportment. His manners were genial, his affections warm, his conversation was brilliant and instructive, his temperament cheerful, his gayety overflowing. He was beloved, admired, and courted by all who knew him; and, finally, when he went forth from his college, whatever may have been the discouragements of his narrow fortunes, he was followed by those who had marked his genius and measured his character, as a young man who was soon to be heard of with distinction on the high places of the world.