rvest-field" to acquire the means to prosecute their
professional studies. Daniel Webster, the son of a New England farmer,
taught school at Fryeburg, Maine, "upon a salary of about one dollar
per diem." "His salary was all saved ... as a fund for his _own
professional_ education and to help his brother through college."
"During his residence at Fryeburg, Mr. Webster borrowed (he was too
poor to buy) Blackstone's _Commentaries_." Mr. Webster's great rival,
Henry Clay, also was compelled to resort to the "school-room and
harvest-field to obtain the pecuniary means," etc. etc. etc. The son
of the poor widow with seven children "applied himself to the labor of
the field with alacrity and diligence;" "and there yet live those who
remember to have seen him oftentimes riding his sorry horse, with a
rope bridle, no saddle, and a bag of grain." "By the familiar name
of the Mill-boy of the Slashes do these men ... perpetuate the
remembrance of his lowly yet dutiful and unrepining employments."
American biography is so filled with similar instances, showing how
the great characters of her great men acquired their development and
strength in the stern gymnasium of poverty, even in "the school-room
and harvest-field," that I could fill volumes with the glowing
records. The youngest American school-boy recognizes Abraham Lincoln
and Henry Wilson in this _American_ galaxy. Whose heart has not been
stirred by the life-story of the great Hugh Miller, the stonecutter's
pick earning for him humble means, thereby enabling him to acquire
that learning which made his name a household word even in America.
Truth, then, as I have remarked, obliges me to admit that we have in
our medical colleges some young men who labor "in harvest-fields and
school-rooms" in order that they may honorably pay their way, rather
than eat the bread or accept the gratuities of pauperism.

Last March there graduated at the medical department of the University
of Pennsylvania one of these self-supporting young men. He was the son
of a missionary clergyman: the father was poor in pocket, but the son
was not poor in spirit. During the interval between his winter courses
of lectures, rather than be a burden to his father, rather than accept
gratuitous instruction from the school, he went into the coal regions
of Pennsylvania and worked in a coal-mine, as a common miner, to
procure funds to enable him to complete his professional studies;
and, _strange_ as it may seem,