cutting it
in two.

In the early spring great preparation was made for tapping the
maple-trees and boiling the sap down to sugar, which was always an
agreeable employment for young Daniel. Another occupation of the boy on
the farm was in weeding, pulling, and spreading flax, which boys
generally dislike very much.

After sheep were introduced in this locality there was a general washing
of them in the brook about the first of May, after which sheep-shearing
came on.

Planting, hoeing, and haying was very hard work for the boys, and very
few liked it. After the harvest something was done in lumbering, and the
Websters, having a small saw-mill on their farm, made shingles and
boards; although for many years shingles and clapboards were mostly
split by hand. Daniel was peculiarly fond of hunting and fishing, a
passion which lasted his whole lifetime. Minks, musk-rats, and now and
then a fox, were caught in traps, though the latter was oftener shot.
Small game, such as partridges and squirrels, were very plenty in the
woods, and the skins of gray squirrels were most always used for winter
caps for the boys. Larger game, like moose, deer, bears, wolves, and
sometimes panthers, were taken.

The schooling of boys was often among these scenes, where at home the
evenings were spent in studying by the light of a pitch-pine knot.

Itinerant ministers, in those days, mostly supplied the rustic pulpit,
and visited their scattered flocks through many miles of travel.

The boys were expected to be very decorous not only to the visiting
ministers but to all older than themselves. Reverence was natural to
Daniel Webster, and was not with him a mere matter of cultivation.

TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.

Good Doctor, what has put it in your head
To sail away across the ocean blue?
Have you got tired of Boston? or, instead,
Do you mistrust that we are tired of you?

You wanted to see England, and you thought
That you might go for once in fifty years:
Well, your own way--just make your visit short;
So here's _bon voyage_,--and also a few tears.

We hope that you will have a joyful time,
Meet hosts of friends, and sit at many a feast;
And when, with all your wit and all your rhyme,
You once are back in this your native clime,
Don't ask to sail again off to the East
For--well, for five times fifty years at least.