From Farm Boy to Senator

robably for economical reasons. Judge Webster was a poor man, and though the charges at Exeter at that time were very moderate they were a heavy draft

arges, too, were wonderfully low. For board and instruction he only charged one dollar per week, which leads us to infer either that provisi

the boy came, "do you wis

r, if you a

at you should do so. I intend to place

tation as a teacher, and the p

ot announced the plan

re ascending a hill slowly through deep snows the Judge, who had for some time been silent, said, "Dan, I may as well tell you what plan

ith his straitened means to carry through such a plan as that, and his heart was full. As he h

ung readers-have received a similar announcement

restraint than when he was a pupil at Exeter. Indeed I shall not attempt to conceal the fact that occasionally Dan's love

however, by a compliment to his natural abili

irgil, a long lesson, as many boys would think. Daniel did

ecitation came, Dan recited his l

Dr. Wood, preparin

e a few more lines

have read twenty-five or thirty lines more. But the

n your industry," said his teach

r." "Very remarkable," said the ministe

s, which he appeared to know quite

without a feeling of relief, for it is rather tedious to l

an, "I am not

you read?" asked D

like," said Dan, his eyes twinkling w

I don't think I shall have time to hear them now. Y

. My boy reader may like to read an anecdote of this time, which I will giv

ent and got some horses, and put a side-saddle on one, and we set off. We did not get home till it was pretty late, and I soon went to bed. When my father came home he asked my mother where I was, and what I had been about. She told him. The next morning when I awoke I saw all the clothes I had brought from Dr. Wood's tied up in a small bundle again. When I

or the boy to have remained at his task, and so saved his father the trouble of finishing it. However, it is not my intention to present the b

s set to mowing. He di

atter, Dan?" a

answered Dan, an answer which wi

remedy the difficulty, but when it was

hang it to suit yourself

branch of a tree, and turning to his f

turning home, questioned the boys as to

n doing, Ezekiel?"

r," was the

el, what have

ng Zek

inction he may have had in his mind some faint foreshadowing. This indulgence was increased by Dan's early delicacy of constitution. At any rate, Daniel had in his father his best friend,

translation of Don Quixote, and this seems to have had a powerful fascination for the boy. "I began to read it," he says in his autobiography, "and it is li

supply of preparatory knowledge than now. In the ancient languages he had read the first six books of Virgil's ?neid, Cicero's four Orations against Catiline, a little Greek grammar, and the four Evangelists of the Greek Testament. In mathematics he had some knowledge of arithmetic, but knew nothing of algebra o