. He roamed the woods, fished,
hunted, and read every scrap of print that came his way.

Being able to read any kind of print, and not being strong enough to work,
it very early was decided that he should have an education. It is rather a
humbling confession to make, but our worthy forefathers chiefly prized an
education for the fact that it caused the fortunate possessor to be exempt
from manual labor.

When Daniel was fourteen, a member of Congress came to see Ebenezer
Webster, to secure his influence at election. As the great man rode away,
Ebenezer said to his son: "Daniel, look there! he is educated and gets six
dollars a day in Congress for doing nothing; while I toil on this rocky
hillside and hardly see six dollars in a year. Daniel, get an education!"

"I'll do it," said Daniel, and throwing his arms around his father's neck,
burst into tears.

The village of Salisbury, where Webster was born, is fifteen miles north
of Concord. You leave the train at Boscowan, and there is a rickety old
stage, with a loquacious driver, that will take you to Salisbury, five
miles, for twenty-five cents. The country is one vast outcrop of granite;
and one can not but be filled with admiration, mingled with pity, for the
dwellers thereabouts who call these piles of rock "farms."

As we wound slowly around the hills, the church-spire of the village came
in sight; and soon we entered the one street of this sleepy, forgotten
place. I shook hands with the old stage-driver as he let me down in front
of the tavern; and as I went in search of the landlord, I thought of the
remark of the Chicago woman who, in riding from Warwick over to Stratford,
said, "Goodness me! why should a man like Shakespeare ever take it in his
head to live so far off!"

Salisbury has four hundred people. You can rent a house there for fifty
dollars a year, or should you prefer not to keep house, but board, you
can be accommodated at the tavern for three dollars a week. There are
various abandoned farms round about, and they are abandoned so thoroughly
that even Kate Sanborn would not have the courage to their adoption try.

The landlord of the hotel told me that were it not for the "Harvest
Dance," the dance on the Fourth of July, and the party at Christmas, he
could not keep the house open at all. Of course, all the inhabitants know
that Webster was born at Salisbury, but there is not so much local pride
in the matter as there is at East Aurora over the f