o weigh mighty questions, the courage to
formulate them, and the sturdy vitality to stand up and declare them in
the face of opposition. Revolutions are fought by farmers and
rail-splitters; these are the embattled men who fire the shots heard
'round the world.

When Daniel Webster's father took up his residence in New Hampshire, his
log cabin was the most northern one of the Colonies. Between him and
Montreal lay an unbroken forest inhabited only by prowling Indians.
Ebenezer Webster's long rifle had sent cold lead into many a redskin; and
the same rifle had done good service in fighting the British. Once, its
owner stood guard before Washington's Headquarters at Newburgh, and
Washington came out and said, "Captain Webster, I can trust you!"

Ebenezer Webster would leave his home to carry a bag of corn on his back
through the woods to the mill ten miles away to have it ground into meal,
and his wife would be left alone with the children. On such occasions,
Indians who never saw settlers' cabins without having an itch to burn
them, used sometimes to call, and the housewife would have to parley with
these savages, "impressing them concerning the rights of property."

So here was born Daniel Webster, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two, the
second child of his mother. His father was then forty-three, and had
already raised one brood, but his mother was only in her twenties. It
seems that biting poverty and sore deprivation are about as good prenatal
influences as a soul can well ask, provided there abides with the mother a
noble discontent and a brave unrest.

However, it came near being overdone in Daniel Webster's case, for the
Mrs. Gamp who presided at his birth declared he could not live, and if he
did, would "allus be a no-'count."

But he made a brave fight for breath, and his crossness and peevishness
through the first years of his life were proof of vitality. He must have
been a queer toddler when he wore dresses, with his immense head and
deep-set black eyes and serious ways.

Being sickly, he was allowed to rule, and the big girls, his half-sisters,
humored him, and his mother did the same. They taught him his letters when
he was only a baby, and he himself said that he could not remember a time
when he could not read the Bible.

When he grew older he did not have to bring in wood and do the chores--he
was not strong enough, they said. Little Dan was of a like belief, and
encouraged the idea on every occasion