However, it came near being overdone in Daniel Webster’s case, for the Mrs. Gamp who presided at his birth declared he could not live, and if he did, would “allus be a no-’count.”

But he made a brave fight for breath, and his crossness and peevishness through the first years of his life were proof of vitality.  He must have been a queer toddler when he wore dresses, with his immense head and deep-set black eyes and serious ways.

Being sickly, he was allowed to rule, and the big girls, his half-sisters, humored him, and his mother did the same.  They taught him his letters when he was only a baby, and he himself said that he could not remember a time when he could not read the Bible.

When he grew older he did not have to bring in wood and do the chores—­he was not strong enough, they said.  Little Dan was of a like belief, and encouraged the idea on every occasion.  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.