e abode Webster once returned in his declining
years, and with streaming eyes descanted on the various events of the
home of his youth.

The school which he attended during the winter months was about three
miles from his father's house, and he had often to travel thither
through deep snow. At the age of fourteen he attended a somewhat more
advanced academy for a few months, and his first effort at public
speaking there was a failure. He burst into tears; his antipathy to
public declamation appeared insurmountable, and neither frowns nor
smiles could overcome the reluctance. It was overcome, for when young
Webster felt the power which was in him, he boldly employed it. At
first, however, he was a failure as a public speaker. With all this, he
went forward in the acquisition of knowledge and the bracing of his
mind; and in his fifteenth year he once undertook to repeat five hundred
lines of Virgil, if his teacher would consent to listen.

About this time the elder Webster disclosed to his son his purpose to
send him to college. The talents of the boy and the counsels of friends
pointed out that as a proper path, and that son himself will describe
the effects of his father's information. "I could not speak," he says.
"How could my father, I thought, with so large a family, and in such
narrow circumstances, think of incurring so great an expense for me, and
I laid my head on his shoulder and wept." That boy, however, had further
difficulties to surmount. He had to leave one of his schools to assist
his father in the hay harvest; he had, moreover, the hindrance of a
slender and sickly constitution; but the Bible, side by side with some
standard authors, had now become his English classics, while Cicero,
Virgil, Horace, Demosthenes, and others, were his manuals in ancient
literature. It was knowledge pursued under unusual difficulties, but, in
spite of all, acquired to an unusual extent. So indomitable and
persistent was the boy that in a few months he mastered the difficulties
of the Greek tongue, and finally graduated at Dartmouth when he was
eighteen years of age. Incidents are recorded which show that during his
residence at college he was determined to hold the first place or none.

It was at Dartmouth that Webster's patriotism first flashed forth with
true American ardor, a harbinger to his whole future career. He had now
mastered his boyish aversion to oratory, and on July 4, 1800, the
twenty-fourth anniversary of A