the family. The future orator found his greatest trouble at Exeter in declaiming. "Many a piece," says Webster "did I commit to memory, and recite and rehearse, in my own room, over and over again; yet when the day came, when the school collected to hear declamations, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification." He now studied with a clergyman at home and entered Dartmouth College in 1797. The familiar story of how young Webster "worked his way" through college and the self-denial and rigid economy he exercised is told in his "Autobiography." After graduation, hard pushed for money while studying law, how he took charge of an academy at Fryeburg, Maine, for one dollar a day. He paid his board by copying deeds and sent his spare money to help his brother Ezekiel through Dartmouth. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, began practice in Boscawen, and afterwards in Portsmouth. He took a high rank in his profession at once, and, in 1812, was elected a member of Congress. In 1816, he declined a re-election and removed to Boston. In the next seven years he worked long and hard in his profession and soon established his reputation as one of the ablest lawyers of the land. In 1822 he was again sent to Congress and in 1828 he was chosen a Senator. He remained in the Senate for twelve years, when he was appointed Secretary of State by President Harrison. In 1845 he returned to the Senate, and remained until 1850, when he became Secretary of State under President Fillmore. He resigned his office early in 1852 on account of his health and retired to his home by the seaside at Marshfield, Mass., where he died October 24 of the same year.
Daniel Webster is universally acknowledged to be the foremost of constitutional lawyers and of parliamentary debaters, and without a peer in the highest realms of classic and patriotic oratory. Many of his orations, as the famous Bunker Hill Monument orations, the eulogy upon Adams and Jefferson, the speech upon the trial of the murderers of Capt. Joseph White, the "Reply to Hayne," and others are universally accepted as classics in modern oratory. Physically, Webster was a magnificent specimen of a man. Such a form, such a face, such a presence, are rarely given to any man. Webster's manner had a wonderful impressiveness that intimacy never wore off. His gracious bearing and gentle courtesy made him the delight of every person he ever met. His oratory was in perfect keeping with the man, gracious, logical, majestic, and often sublime. He was by nature free, generous and lavish in his manner of living. As a result his own private finances were often much embarrassed. His wealthy admirers often tided him over his financial straits. Hampered as he was financially, he never sullied his great fame or enriched himself or others by political jobbery.
