368 DANIEL WEBSTER 



the field would pause, sickle in hand, to hear him 

 recite verses from the Bible, Dr. Watts's hymns, or 

 passages from Addison or Pope. Although Ebenezer 

 Webster found it difficult, by unremitting labour and 

 strictest economy, to support his numerous family, he 

 saw such signs of promise in Daniel as to convince 

 him that it was worth while, at whatever cost, to send 

 him to college. Accordingly, in February, 1797, he 

 took him from school, in order to hasten his prepara- 

 tory studies by the aid of a private tutor, the Rev. 

 Samuel Wood of Boscawen. It was on the sleigh- 

 ride to that town, as they were toiling up a mountain- 

 ous road through drifted snow, that Colonel Webster 

 informed Daniel of his plans. The sensitive, warm- 

 hearted boy, who had hardly dared hope for such good 

 fortune and keenly felt the sacrifice it involved, laid 

 his head upon his father's shoulder and burst into 

 tears. After six months with his tutor, he had learned 

 enough to fulfil the slender requirements of those 

 days for admission to Dartmouth College, where he 

 was duly graduated in 1801. He did not take rank at 

 the head of his class, but it was observed that he was 

 capable of great industry, that he seized an idea with 

 surprising quickness, that his memory was prodigious, 

 and his power of lucid statement unrivalled. Along 

 with these enviable gifts he possessed that supreme 

 poetic quality that defies analysis but is at once recog- 

 nized as genius. He was naturally, therefore, consid- 

 ered by tutors and fellow-students the most remarkable 

 man in the college, and the position of superiority thus 

 early gained was easily maintained through life and 

 wherever he was placed. While at college he con- 

 quered or outgrew his boyish shyness, so as to take 



