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This grandmother, his father's mother, was Susannah Bachelder, a descendant of the Rev. Stephen Bachelder, in the county of Rockingham. She had black hair and black eyes, and was a woman of uncommon strength of character. Her son, Mr. Webster's father, inherited from her the "Bachelder complexion;" her other sons had the Webster characteristics. The same division of the parental traits took place in Mr. Webster's own generation. He himself has said that, of his four brothers, only one was dark like himself; the other three ran off into the general characteristics belonging to the name." In fact, however, I have understood that his own brother Ezekiel, who is represented as a model of marly beauty, although his complexion was not so dark as Daniel's, had black hair.

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For which of these two brothers there appeared to be the best chance of health and longevity, in their earlier years, their contemporaries would not have doubted, Ezekiel was a robust youth, grew nearly to manhood in the healthy labors of a farmer's son, who was destined for a farmer himself, was afterward educated, and studied and practised the law; but he died instantly, without any apparent illness, at the age of fortynine. Daniel was a sickly child, and for that reason was not put to work upon the farm so much as his brother; yet he lived to be a man whose physical constitution and frame seemed to be a fitting tabernacle for so great an intellect; and his last illness, in his seventy-first year, was almost the only acute one that he was ever called to endure after he had grown up.

Of the mother of Daniel Webster, there is important testimony from her sons. That she was a woman of clear and vigorous understanding, that she was a tender and self-sacrificing mother, and that to her was referred the final decision of a question that was to affect not only their welfare, but her own and that of every other member of her family, are well authenticated facts.

But it was from his father chiefly, I suppose from that 'Bachelder complexion," physical and moral-that Daniel

'Autobiography.

Webster derived the marked qualities of his nature;' and to the father I therefore now return, in order to give my readers some idea of the feeling with which his son ever regarded him, before I enter upon the narrative of that son's childhood and youth. To me there is something singularly attractive in the image of that tall, dark man, in form and presence one of the noblest of the earth, standing on his not too fertile New-Hampshire acres, looking abroad into the world, and comparing himself with men for whom Nature had done less than she had for him, but whom education had placed where he could not be their competitor. I seem to see his deep, black eye fall tenderly on the boys who are growing up around him, marking the elder for the stay and staff of his age in the labors of home, and setting apart the younger for a life of books and learning and fame. He has no concealments from his household; and, as time rolls on, all come to know his plan. It suits the circumstances, it is in accordance with the habits of a New-England family. Nevertheless, it is a great undertaking in such a house, to send even one son to college." But this man is full of resolution. He has a complexion, as General Stark said of him, "which burned gunpowder will not change," and a heart, as his great son said of him, "which he seemed to have borrowed from a lion." Moreover, he is one of that kind of men who live for their children; and he knows that in his laborious life he has nothing else for which to live. His own want of early education, he thinks, shall be compensated by that which he will give to this intelligent, though feeble, youngest boy; and he and the elder lad will extort from their stubborn glebe" the means of accomplishing this work of love.

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He came, it may readily be supposed, not suddenly or hastily to this resolution. To the age of fourteen, Daniel-who

1 Writing to his son Fletcher, in 1840, respecting the name to be given to his eldest grandson, Mr. Webster said: "I believe we are all indebted to my father's mother for a large portion of the little sense and character which belongs to

us.

Her name was Susannah Bachelder; she was the daughter of a clergyman, and a woman of uncommon strength

of understanding. If I had had many boys, I should have called one of them 'Bachelder.'" The boy in question, Mr. Fletcher Webster's eldest son, was named for his grandfather.

2 Mr. Webster always said that his father was the handsomest man he had ever seen, excepting his brother Ezekiel.

had been taught to read at home, by his mother or his elder sisters, so early that he never afterward could remember when he could not read the Bible--had no other advantages of education than such as he could obtain at the poor town-schools, which were kept only during a part of the year. But his own words will best describe how this was managed, and to what it amounted:

"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.

"When the school was in our neighborhood, it was easy to attend; when it removed to a more distant district, I followed it, still living at home. While yet quite young, and in winter, I was sent daily two and a half or three miles to the school. When it removed still farther, my father sometimes boarded me out in a neighboring family, so that I could still be in the school. A good deal of this was an extra care, more than had been bestowed on my elder brothers, and originating in a conviction of the slenderness and frailty of my constitution, which was thought not likely ever to allow me to pursue a robust occupation.

"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. My masters used to tell me that they feared, after all, my fingers were destined for the plough-tail." "

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Such was the life of the boy Daniel Webster at about the period when the foundations of the Constitution of the United States were laid. The strong good sense and intelligent patriotism of the father acted upon that great national event. His townsmen had been accustomed to intrust to him

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1 Autobiography, written by Mr. Webster in 1830.

Mr. Webster once repeated to me, with great pride, a little speech made by his father before giving his vote for the

Constitution, and requested me, if I ever had an opportunity, to do something to perpetuate it. It is well known that when the convention of New Hampshire first assembled, in February, 1788, a

such public stations as they had to bestow, and he sat in the convention of New Hampshire, which ratified the Federal Constitution, while his little son at home was playing among the cowslips in the sweet meadows of the Merrimac. When the father gave his vote for "the more perfect Union" which the new frame of government was to establish, the early years of his child, who was to instruct the intellect of the nation in its principles, had so little promise of health, that, as he grew up, play was necessarily allowed to be his chief vocation.

'The boy became an adept in it. He played all through the long summer days when he could not work, having for his chief companion, in his field-sports, a certain battered old British soldier and sailor, who had deserted from the king's colors at Bunker Hill, and, having come with a New-Hampshire regiment at the close of the war, had settled himself in a little cottage on the Webster farm. From this man, or with him, he learned the art of angling, which remained a passion with him through life. He apostrophizes this odd character in his autobiography, as Hamlet did Yorick.

"Thou hast carried me on thy back a thousand times,"

was a phrase that rushed to his memory when, after he had become a pillar of the state, he wrote this account of Robert Wise:'

"Early and deeply religious, my father had still a good deal of natural gayety; he delighted to have some one about him that possessed

majority of the delegates were found to be under instructions from their towns to vote against the Constitution. This was the case with Colonel Webster. But the convention was adjourned to meet again in June; and, in the mean time, Colonel Webster obtained from his constituents permission to vote according to his own judgment. When the vote was about to be taken, he rose, and said: "Mr. President, I have listened to the arguments for and against the Constitution. I am convinced such a government as that constitution will establish, if adopted-a government acting directly on the people of the States-is necessary for the common defence and the general welfare. It is the only govern

ment which will enable us to pay off the national debt-the debt which we owe for the Revolution, and which we are bound in honor fully and fairly to discharge. Besides, I have followed the lead of Washington through seven years of war, and I have never been misled. His name is subscribed to this Constitution. He will not mislead us now. I shall vote for its adoption."

I have taken the words of the speech from Mr. Nesmith's Memoir. They are substantially the same with those repeated to me by Mr. Webster. Judge Webster was one of the electors of the President in New Hampshire, when Washington was first chosen to that office.

a humorous vein. A character of this sort, one Robert Wise, with whose adventures, as I learned them from himself, I could fill a small book, was a near neighbor, and a sort of humble companion for a great many years. He was a Yorkshire man; had been a sailor; was with Byng in the Mediterranean; had been a soldier; deserted from the garrison of Gibraltar; travelled through Spain and France and Holland; was taken up afterward, severely punished, and sent back to the army; was in the battle of Minden; had a thousand stories of the yellow-haired Prince Ferdinand; was sent to Ireland, and thence to Boston, with the troops brought out by General Gage; fought at Bunker Hill; deserted to our ranks; served with the New-Hampshire troops in all the succeeding campaigns, and, at the peace, built a little cottage in the corner of our field, and lived there to an advanced old age. He was my Izaac 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. He had twice deserted from the English king, and once at least committed treason as well as desertion; but he had still a British heart. 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! Thou wast indeed a true Briton."'

It was in this happy childhood that he began those habits of minute observation of nature, which all who ever knew him knew to be one of his strongest characteristics, and one of his greatest pleasures. Then, for example, he saw and never forgot how the salmon and the shad, as they came up the Merrimac, "shook hands, and parted" at the confluence of the two streams which make that river, "the shad a going into the lakes, and the salmon all keeping up the mountain torrent, which they continued to ascend, as used to be said, until their back fins were out of the water." Then, too, he first began to notice how the river was deepening its channel; a phenomenon

'Autobiography.

Letter to Mr. Blatchford, ut supra.

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