Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/242

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238
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

year after year to grow Saratoga potatoes for the Boston market.

No American, foreign or domestic, ever made a greater name for himself than Daniel Webster, but he was not so good a penman as Noah; Noah was the better pen-writer.

Noah Webster also had the better command of language of the two. Those who have read his great work entitled "Webster's Elementary Spelling-Book, or, How One Word Led to Another," will agree with me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express himself. He was a brainy man and a good speller.

One by one our eminent men are passing away. Mr. Webster has passed away; Napoleon Bonaparte is no more; and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away. This has been a severe winter on Red Shirt; and I have to guard against the night air a good deal myself.

It would ill become me, at this late date, to criticise Mr. Webster's work, a work that is now, I may say, in nearly every home and school-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr. Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my books.

I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks egotistical in me; but, although Noah's book is larger than mine, and has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at