as destitute of the means;--and
there were fewer education societies, and other facilities for
obtaining eleemosynary instruction in those days than in the present
age of disinterested benevolence. The inventive genius of the woman was
therefore not slow to devise a project by which her friend might be
served, while at the same time her own favorite design might be
furthered--and that, too, without making, even prospectively, any
essential encroachment upon the means of her husband. For the
attainment of this object--or rather for the removal of so formidable
an obstacle in the future career of her son--she had for a long while
been taxing her inventive and diplomatic powers. An arrangement was
therefore soon negotiated, by which the pedagogue received our hero
under his own roof, and prepared him for the university, while his own
son was taken as a boarder into the family of the coachmaker, where he
remained during the whole of his collegiate course. The immediate
results were auspicious. The son of the pedagogue took the honors of
his class, and has since been enabled to rejoice as the president of a
transmontane university; and our hero was, in turn, duly prepared for
matriculation beneath the academic evergreens of his own neighborhood.
It is but fair to acknowledge, moreover, that students have entered
that institution, as well as divers others, no better prepared than
Daniel Wheelwright. Notwithstanding the natural indolence of his
character, he knew that he must know something before he could enter
college, and that in case of a failure, he must again cultivate more
acquaintance with the _felloes_ of the shop, than with the fellows
of the university; and with the stimulus of such a consideration before
him, he applied himself to his books with extraordinary diligence. His
preceptor was in all respects adequate to his task; and the requisites
of the college being quite liberal and republican--not repressing the
generous ardor of young ambition by exacting too much in the
outset--the aspiring Daniel crossed the threshhold of the university
without any considerable difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother
had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid
any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered
questions, her son had been represented to the faculty as a very modest
and diffident youth, who knew much more than he could tell--like the
grave bird, of which it was believe