ide for, they no longer lived "from hand to mouth," hoping to make a
fortune by some lucky stroke, and then to leave the colony forever. They
went to work, instead, to cultivate the land, to build good houses, to
make and save money, to educate their children, and to become prosperous
and happy in their homes. Virginia, which had been a mere stopping-place
to them, was now their own country, where their families lived and their
nearest friends were around them. There they expected to pass their
lives in efforts to better their own fortunes, and to make the country
a pleasant one for their children and grandchildren after them to live
in. They were anxious to have schools and churches, and to keep up right
standards of morals and proper manners in the colony, so that their
children might grow to be good and happy men and women.

That is the way in which the first English colony in America became
prosperous, and many of the men who afterwards became famous in the
history of the nation were the great-great-grandsons of the women whom
Sir Edwin Sandys sent out as sweethearts for the colonists.

The Pilgrims, who settled at Plymouth about the time that all this
happened, brought their families with them, and quickly made themselves
at home in America. The planting of these two colonies--the first in
Virginia and the second in Massachusetts--was the beginning from which
our great, free, and happy country, with its fifty millions of people,
has grown.

THE BOYHOOD OF DANIEL WEBSTER.[A]

[A] For some of the materials used in this sketch I am indebted
to the work entitled "The Boyhood of Great Men," by John G. Edgar,
published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers.

Daniel Webster, the great statesman, orator, and lawyer, was born on the
18th of January, 1782.

His father lived near the head-waters of the Merrimac River, and the
only school within reach was a poor one kept open for a few months every
winter. There Webster learned all that the country schoolmaster could
teach him, which was very little; but he acquired a taste which did more
for him than the reading, writing, and arithmetic of the school. He
learned to like books, and to want knowledge; and when a boy gets really
hungry and thirsty for knowledge it is not easy to keep him ignorant.
When some of the neighbors joined in setting up a little circulating
library, young Webster read every book in it two or three times, and
even committed to memory a large part of