and the wind. In almost every one of the great speeches that he made, as
a middle-aged, or old man, he mentioned them.
In the state of New Hampshire, when Daniel was a boy, teachers and
schools were scarce. A man or a woman would teach a few weeks in one
town and then move on to another. They were called traveling teachers.
This was done because there were not anywhere near enough teachers to go
round, and it was thought only fair that each little village or town
should get its few weeks. Daniel followed these traveling teachers a
long time every year, sometimes walking two or three miles a day, at
other times boarding away from home. Nothing was taught in these schools
but reading and writing. Daniel was an almost perfect reader but a poor
writer.
One of Daniel's teachers wanted his pupils to know good poems and
chapters of books by heart. He offered a prize--a jack-knife--to the one
who should learn the most verses from the Bible. One after another was
called upon to recite. They had found it rather hard, and many of them
had learned but eight or ten verses at the most. When it was Daniel's
turn, he recited chapter after chapter. He kept on and on until it was
time for the teacher to dismiss school. Mr. Tappan said: "Well, there is
no doubt you deserve the prize. How many more chapters did you learn?"
"Oh, a lot more," answered Dan, laughing.
After Daniel was twelve, he began to grow stronger and did his share of
work on the farm. One day when he was helping his father in the
hayfield, Mr. Webster said: "Daniel, it is the men who have fine
educations that succeed in this world. I do not intend that you shall be
a drudge all your days. I am going to send you through college."
[Illustration: He rode there on horseback. _Page 129._]
Daniel was so pleased at this that he sat right down on the hay and
cried.
When Daniel was fitting for college at Exeter, he was about the
brightest pupil there, but it did seem funny that the boy who was to one
day be a great orator could not then declaim or recite before the
school. He would learn the nicest pieces and practise them in his own
room, but when he stood up before all the scholars and teachers, his
courage left him. Sometimes, when his name was called, he could not rise
from his seat. He was very much ashamed of himself and shed a good many
tears over his shyness. But he persevered and finally did better than
any of the boys. There is nothing like trying things enough times.
When Daniel went to Dartmouth College, he rode there on horseback,
carrying his feather-bed, blankets, clothes, and books on his horse. He
was still such a dark looking person that the students thought he was an
Indian.
Daniel studied law and made very fine pleas in the courtrooms. He was a
senator in Congress, a secretary of state, and a public speaker who was
admired in England as well as in America.
Mr. Webster had a wife and children. He bought a large estate at
Marshfield in Massachusetts, where the family spent many summers. He
loved children and animals, was kind to the poor, and bought the freedom
of several slaves. He was very neat in dress. His favorite costume for
court and senate was a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat,
and black trousers.
Daniel Webster always liked to look up old friends and was never cold or
haughty to any one. Once when he was going through the West, making
famous speeches in the different cities, a man crowded forward to speak
to him, saying: "Why, is this little black Dan that used to water my
horses?" The dignified orator did not mind a bit. "Yes," he laughed,
"I'm little black Dan grown up!"
Daniel was a good son to the father, who had tried hard to make him a
fine scholar. Only once did he disappoint him. That was when he refused
to be clerk of court. When his father begged him to take that place, he
said: "No, father, I am going to use my tongue in courts, not my pen. I
mean to be an orator!" He proved to be one of America's great ones.
AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS
Augustus St. Gaudens was a sculptor. He made wonderful figures of our
American heroes. No matter how often we are told of the brave deeds of
Lincoln, Sherman, Shaw, and Farragut, we shall remember these men longer
because of St. Gaudens's statues of them.
Although Augustus was the son of a French shoemaker, named Bernard Paul
St. Gaudens, and a young Irish girl of Dublin, who lost her heart to
Bernard as she sat binding slippers in the same shop where he made
shoes, we call him an American, for a great famine swept Ireland when
little Augustus was only six months old, and the young parents sailed to
America with all haste. They landed in Boston, where the mother and baby
waited for the father to find work in New York. He soon sent for them,
and as Augustus and his two brothers grew up in that city and always
lived in this country, he seems to belong to us.
Shoemakers, as a rule, are not rich men, and Mr. St. Gaudens did not pay
very strict attention to his work, for he joined so many societies and
clubs that these took his time. His patrons would never have had their
shoes made or mended if he had not hired help. Then, also, his sons
learned to cobble shoes very young.
Before Augustus went into his father's shop to work, and when he had a
good many hours out of school, he found the busy streets of New York
exciting enough. He was laughing and merry, so that he made friends from
the Bowery to Central Park. He had only to sniff hungrily at the bakery
to have the good-natured German cook toss him out brown sugar-cakes, and
if he fell off the wharves, or ran too near big fire-engines, some kind
policeman rescued him. He was not a bad boy. Probably the worst thing he
did was to join some other boys in the string joke. They used to tie
strings from the seats of the bakery-wagons to the posts of high stoops
and watch these strings knock off hats as men hurried by.
Sundays were gala days. If the sun shone, all the boys in the
neighborhood went over to New Jersey on the ferry-boat. Augustus's
father always gave him and his brothers five cents each. Two cents took
a boy over to New Jersey, two cents brought him back, and there was the
other cent for candy or gum. It was good sport to chase each other
through the green fields, hunt birds' nests, and climb trees, but the
best fun came on the way back, when the boys sat in a long row at the
front of the boat, letting their legs dangle over the edge, watching the
life on the river.
When Augustus went to school, at the age of ten, he did more drawing on
his slate than arithmetic. How the pupils craned their necks to see his
pictures! He did not draw just one man, a bird, or a single house, but
whole armies shooting guns and cannon. These soldiers looked alive. On
his way home, Augustus was apt to draw charcoal sketches on every white
house he passed. The sketches were fine, but the housekeepers scolded.
Few people noticed the real talent of the boy, but one old doctor became
much excited and urged Augustus's father to let him study art. His
father had seen very lifelike pictures of his own workshop and cobblers
which Augustus had drawn, and agreed that he would do what he could to
help him. Only Augustus must for a few more years earn money for the
family. So while he went to a night school for drawing lessons, he cut
cameos through the day.
My, but the man who taught him cameo cutting was cross! Augustus was
scolded and driven to work faster all day long.
In spite of the terrible rages into which this stonecutter would go, he
was very artistic, and Augustus learned how to cut wonderful heads of
dogs, horses, and lions, for scarf pins. He made hundreds of lions'
heads, and twenty years later, when he was helping his brother model the
lion figures for the Boston Public Library, his hands fairly flew, he
knew all the lines so well.
When Augustus went in the evenings to the drawing classes at Cooper
Union, he began drawing human figures and was so eager about his art
that he would have forgotten to eat or sleep if his mother had not
watched him. As he grew older, he loved art more and more. The only
thing else that attracted his eye was the city-full of soldiers, at the
beginning of the Civil War. He read the bulletin boards, heard groups of
men telling about battles, and his heart ached with love for America. He
wanted to go to war to show that love. But his father was now sure that
Augustus was a genius and insisted upon his going to Europe to study.
The father could not give him much money, hardly more than enough to get
him across the ocean, but he could cut cameos to pay for his lessons.
Augustus stayed in Paris a year. He made friends among the artists just
as he had made them when a child in New York. Then he worked four years
in Rome. He had a hard time there and grew thin for want of food and
sleep, but he was as eager as ever and worked faster and harder than
before. People began to visit his studio and always went away full of
praise for the talented young man. Rich Americans visiting in Rome urged
him to return to this country. They gave him orders, and he finally came
back to America, where he was kept busy on busts and medallions until he
began to have orders for monuments of great Americans. This was work he
liked. He loved America, and he was proud of her heroes. Perhaps he
loved Abraham Lincoln best of all. He had seen Lincoln a good many
times, and he had read and studied about his beautiful life until every
line of that man's face and figure was clear in his mind. Still, when he
was asked to make a statue of Lincoln for the city of Chicago, he worked
on it many years. On his statue of General Sherman which stands in
Central Park, New York, he labored eleven years. On the beautiful Robert
Gould Shaw monument which stands in front of the State House in Boston,
he spent twelve years. This does not mean that he stood with clay in his
hands all this time, but that from the time he began to plan what he
would draw into the statue, what size it ought to be, and whether the
man should be standing or sitting, until it stood all finished, he
thought and worked a long, long time. His work is almost perfect, and
fine work always takes time and patience.
When busy on the Gould Shaw monument, St. Gaudens often stood on a
scaffolding ten hours at a time in the hottest summer days, not eating
anything but an apple. He was so eager over his work that he did not
want to lose a minute. But he had some fun as well. The horse he used as
a model used to get terribly tired of standing so long and would snort
and prance and paw the ground until it took several men to hold him. And
some of the negroes who posed nearly fainted when they saw St. Gaudens
make faces that looked exactly like them with just a few pinches of his
fingers on the soft clay. They thought he was in league with Satan, they
said. When you see this monument, you will notice how brave Colonel Shaw
looks, riding on his large horse, and how eagerly the colored troops
march behind him.
St. Gaudens was very fond of Phillips Brooks, the good Bishop, and
because of their friendship, his statue of Brooks at Trinity Church,
Boston, is so like the man that you almost expect to hear him speak, as
you stand before it. St. Gaudens had been to concerts with Bishop
Brooks, had heard him preach, had seen him merry and sad, knew how
unselfish he was, and how much he liked to cheer people up, and somehow
managed to make his statue tell us all these traits. There is no doubt
St. Gaudens was one of the world's great sculptors, but he would never
have been great if he had not loved his art so well that he could go
hungry, cold, and tired year after year for the sake of learning it. And
he was great because he was so determined to do his work over and over
again until he felt it was just right. He always urged students to do
the same. "You can do anything you please," he often said; "it's the
_way_ it's done that makes the difference."
Besides becoming famous, the shoemaker's son was happy and rich in the
end. He had a wife and a son who, among other books, has written a life
of his father. From this book and by the stories St. Gaudens's friends
tell of him, we know that the sculptor was a gentle, loving man who
tried to help the world to be better and wiser. It will not matter
whether it is the statue of Sherman, Logan, Lincoln, or Shaw by St.
Gaudens that you are fortunate enough to see; it will be the way any
piece of his is done which makes it so beautiful, and which makes
Americans glad that almost every bit of his work has stayed in this
country.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Concord, Massachusetts, is one of the New England towns that everybody
likes to visit. When tourists reach Boston they usually make a point of
going to Concord, either by electric or steam train, because they have
read about its famous battle ground, where the first British soldiers
fell in the great Revolutionary War, and because they want to see the
very house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote _Little Women_, and the
homes of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau.
Henry Thoreau, who was born in Concord, loved the town so well that he
spent most of his life tramping through its fields and forests. You
might say the business of his life was walking, for he never had any
real profession, and he walked from four to eight hours a day--across
lots, too. He used to say roads were made for horses and business men.
"Why, what would become of us," he would ask, "if we walked only in a
garden or a mall? What should we see?"
When Mr. Thoreau started out for a long saunter in the woods, he wore a
wide-brimmed straw hat, stout shoes, and strong gray trousers that would
not show spots too easily, and would stand tree-climbing. Under his arm
he usually carried an old music book in which to press plants, and in
his pocket he kept a pencil, his diary, a microscope, a jack-knife, and
a ball of twine. He and a friend, William Ellery Channing, agreed that a
week's camping was more fun than all the books in the world. Once they
tried tramping and camping in Canada. They wore overalls most of the
time, and wishing not to be bothered with trunks or suitcases, they tied
a few changes of clothing in bundles, and each man took an umbrella.
They called themselves "Knights of the Umbrella and Bundle."
The Thoreaus were rather a prominent family in Concord. There were six
of them, all told. The father, Mr. John Thoreau, was a pencil-maker. A
hundred years ago this was a trade that brought good money. Mr. Thoreau
could turn out a great many pencils because all the children helped him
make them. He was a small man, quite deaf, and very shy. He did not talk
much. But his wife, Mrs. Cynthia Thoreau, who was half a head taller
than he, could, and did, talk enough for both. She was handsome,
wide-awake, and had a strong, sweet, singing voice. She took part in all
the merry-makings and also in all the church affairs in Concord. She was
bitter against slavery. She used to call meetings at her house to talk
over ways of putting an end to it, and when slaves ran away from the
South, she often hid them in her home and helped them get further away.
She knew a great deal about nature, bought a good many books for her
children, and was determined that they should have good educations.
Henry, his brother John, and the two sisters, Helen and Sophia, all
taught school. And Helen helped Henry earn money to go to Harvard
College.
The whole Thoreau family were proud of Henry, and his mother never tired
of telling what fine letters and essays he could write. She and Sophia
went one day to call on an aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson's, Miss Mary
Emerson, who was eighty-four. Mrs. Thoreau began to talk about Henry
right away. Miss Emerson nodded her head and said: "Very true," now and
then, but kept her eyes shut every minute her callers stayed. When they
rose to go, Miss Emerson said: "Perhaps you noticed, Mrs. Thoreau, that
I kept my eyes closed during your call. I did so because I did not wish
to look on the ribbons you are wearing--so unsuitable for a child of God
and a woman of your years!" Poor Mrs. Thoreau was seventy, and her
bonnet was as bright and gay as it had been possible to buy, for she
loved rich colors and silks and velvets. She did not mind Miss Emerson's
rebuke a bit, but Sophia stuffed her handkerchief in her mouth to keep
from laughing aloud.
When Henry was a boy, he used to delight in his Uncle Charles Dunbar,
who paid the family a visit every year. Mr. Dunbar was not a worker like
his sister, Cynthia Thoreau. He did not have any business but drifted
about the country, living by his wits. One of his favorite tricks was to
pretend to swallow all the knives and forks, and a plate or two, at a
tavern, and offer to give them back if the landlord would not charge for
his dinner. He was a great wrestler and could do sleight-of-hand tricks.
Henry used to watch him and ask question after question, and he learned
how to do a few tricks himself.
Just as his mother hoped, when Henry grew up, he decided to be a writer.
To be sure he taught school a while and gave lectures which people did
not understand very well, for he had strange ideas for those times, but
he wrote page after page, sitting in the woods, and liked that better
than all else. He first wrote an account of a week's trip on the Concord
and Merrimac rivers. This book did not sell very well, and one time he
carried home from the publishers seven hundred copies that no one would
buy, saying: "Well, I have quite a respectably sized library now--all my
own writing, too!"
But four or five years later Thoreau built a hut on the shore of Walden
Pond and lived there all alone, like a hermit, for two years. He did
this for two reasons: because he wanted to prove that people spend too
much time and money on food and clothes and because he wanted a
perfectly quiet chance, with no neighbors running in, to write more
books. He said he spent but one hundred dollars a year while he lived in
this hut. He raised beans on his land, ate wild berries, caught
fish--and "went visiting" now and then. I should not wonder if he often
took a second helping of food, when visiting. To buy his woodsman's
clothes and a few necessities, he planted gardens, painted houses, and
cut wood for his friends. He wrote a book called _Walden_ which tells
all about these seven or eight hundred days he went a-hermiting, and
after that, several other books. These sold very well. In all of them he
was rather fond of boasting that he had found the only sensible way to
live. "I am for simple living," he would say, and always was declaring
"I love to be ALONE!" But sometimes people passing by the pond used to
hear him whistling old ballads, or playing very softly and beautifully
on a flute, and they thought he sounded lonely. Although he makes you
feel, when you read his books, that it is fine to roam the fields,
sniffing the wild grape and the yellow violets, and that no one can find
pleasure like the man who rows, and skates, and swims, and tills the
soil, yet the question is bound to come: "_Is_ a man all alone in a hut
any better off than a jolly father in a big house, playing games with
his children?"
Let me tell you, too, that after all Thoreau's talk about wanting to be
alone, the last year he lived in the hut, he used to steal off, just at
twilight, to a neighbor's house where there were little children. While
they curled up on a rug, in front of the open fire, he would draw near
in a big rocking-chair and sit for an hour or more telling them stories
of his childhood. He would pop corn, make whistles for them with his
jack-knife, or, best of all, do some of the juggling tricks, which he
had learned, as a boy, from his uncle Charles. And one day he appeared
at the door with a hay-rack to give them a ride. He had covered the
bottom of the rack with deep hay, then spread a buffalo robe over the
hay to make it comfortable. He sat on a board placed across the front
and drove the span of horses, and as he drove, he told funny stories and
sang songs till the children thought a hermit was a pretty good sort of
a chum.
The hut went to pieces years ago, and only a pile of stones marks the
place where it stood, but if you go to Concord, you will find a pleasant
street named for Thoreau, and the house in which he lived the last
twelve years of his life, half hidden by tall trees. And also you can
read his books and learn how he enjoyed the woods and what beautiful
things he found in them.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
As much as seventy years ago, in the city of Boston, there lived a small
girl who had the naughty habit of running away. On a certain April
morning, almost as soon as her mother finished buttoning her dress,
Louisa May Alcott slipped out of the house and up the street as fast as
her feet could carry her.
Louisa crept through a narrow alley and crossed several streets. It was
a beautiful day, and she did not care so very much just where she went
so long as she was having an adventure, all by herself. Suddenly she
came upon some children who said they were going to a nice, tall ash
heap to play. They asked her to join them.
Louisa thought they were fine playmates, for when she grew hungry they
shared some cold potatoes and bread crusts with her. She would not have
thought this much of a lunch in her mother's dining-room, but for an
outdoor picnic it did very well.
When she tired of the ash heap she bade the children good-by, thanked
them for their kindness, and hop-skipped to the Common, where she must
have wandered about for hours, because, all of a sudden, it began to
grow dark. Then she wanted to get home. She wanted her doll, her kitty,
and her mother! It frightened her when she could not find any street
that looked natural. She was hungry and tired, too. She threw herself
down on some door-steps to rest and to watch the lamplighter, for you
must remember this was long before there was any gas or electricity in
Boston. At this moment a big dog came along. He kissed her face and
hands and then sat down beside her with a sober look in his eyes, as if
he were thinking: "I guess, Little Girl, you need some one to take care
of you!"
Poor tired Louisa leaned against his neck and was fast asleep in no
time. The dog kept very still. He did not want to wake her.
Pretty soon the town crier went by. He was ringing a bell and reading in
a loud voice, from a paper in his hand, the description of a lost
child. You see, Louisa's father and mother had missed her early in the
forenoon and had looked for her in every place they could think of. Each
hour they grew more worried, and at dusk they decided to hire this man
to search the city.
When the runaway woke up and heard what the man was
shouting--"Lost--Lost--A little girl, six years old, in a pink frock,
white hat, and new, green shoes"--she called out in the darkness:
"Why--dat's ME!"
The town crier took Louisa by the hand and led her home, where you may
be sure she was welcomed with joy.
Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, from first to last, had had a good many frights
about this flyaway Louisa. Once when she was only two years old they
were traveling with her on a steamboat, and she darted away, in some
moment when no one was noticing her, and crawled into the engine-room to
watch the machinery. Of course her clothes were all grease and dirt, and
she might have been caught in the machinery and hurt.
You won't be surprised to know that the next day after this last affair
Louisa's parents made sure that she did not leave the house. Indeed, to
be entirely certain of her where-abouts, they tied her to the leg of a
big sofa for a whole day!
Except for this one fault, Louisa was a good child, so she felt much
ashamed that she had caused her mother, whom she loved dearly, so much
worry. As she sat there, tied to the sofa, she made up her mind that she
would never frighten her so again. No--she would cure herself of the
running-away habit!
After that day, whenever she felt the least desire to slip out of the
house without asking permission, she would hurry to her own little room
and shut the door tight. To keep her mind from bad plans she would shut
her eyes and make up stories--think them all out, herself, you know.
Then, when some of them seemed pretty good, she would write them down so
that she would not forget them. By and by she found she liked making
stories better than anything she had ever done in her life.
Her mother sometimes wondered why Louisa grew so fond of staying in her
little chamber at the head of the stairs, all of a sudden, but was
pleased that the runaway child had changed into such a quiet,
like-to-stay-at-home girl.