When the war closed, the young soldier and Indian fighter had time to look about him for a home. As might have been expected, he clung to the frontier to which he was accustomed, and in the year 1763 settled in the northernmost part of the town of Salisbury. Here he built a log-house, to which, in the following year, he brought his first wife, and here he began his career as a farmer. At that time there was nothing civilized between him and the French settlements of Canada. The wilderness stretched away from his door an ocean of forest unbroken by any white man's habitation; and in these primeval woods, although the war was ended and the French power overthrown, there still lurked roving bands of savages, suggesting the constant possibilities of a midnight foray or a noonday ambush, with their accompaniments of murder and pillage. It was a fit home, however, for such a man as Ebenezer Webster. He was a borderer in the fullest sense in a commonwealth of borderers. He was, too, a splendid specimen of the New England race; a true descendant of ancestors who had been for generations yeomen and pioneers. Tall, large, dark of hair and eyes, in the rough world in which he found himself he had been thrown at once upon his own resources without a day's schooling, and compelled to depend on his own innate force of sense and character for success. He had had a full experience of desperate fighting with Frenchmen and Indians, and, the war over, he had returned to his native town with his hard-won rank of captain. Then he had married, and had established his home upon the frontier, where he remained battling against the grim desolation of the wilderness and of the winter, and against all the obstacles of soil and climate, with the same hardy bravery with which he had faced the Indians. After ten years of this life, in 1774, his wife died and within a twelvemonth he married again.

Soon after this second marriage the alarm of war with England sounded, and among the first to respond was the old ranger and Indian fighter, Ebenezer Webster. In the town which had grown up near his once solitary dwelling he raised a company of two hundred men, and marched at their head, a splendid looking leader, dark, massive, and tall, to join the forces at Boston. We get occasional glimpses of this vigorous figure during the war. At Dorchester, Washington consulted him about the state of feeling in New Hampshire. At Bennington, we catch sight of him among the first who scaled the breastworks, and again coming out of the battle, his swarthy skin so blackened with dust and gunpowder that he could scarcely be recognized. We hear of him once more at West Point, just after Arnold's treason, on guard before the general's tent, and Washington says to him, "Captain Webster, I believe I can trust you." That was what everybody seems to have felt about this strong, silent, uneducated man. His neighbors trusted him. They gave him every office in their gift, and finally he was made judge of the local court. In the intervals of his toilsome and adventurous life he had picked up a little book-learning, but the lack of more barred the way to the higher honors which would otherwise have been easily his. There were splendid sources of strength in this man, the outcome of such a race, from which his children could draw. He was, to begin with, a magnificent animal, and had an imposing bodily presence and appearance. He had courage, energy, and tenacity, all in high degree. He was business-like, a man of few words, determined, and efficient. He had a great capacity for affection and self-sacrifice, noble aspirations, a vigorous mind, and, above all, a strong, pure character which invited trust. Force of will, force of mind, force of character; these were the three predominant qualities in Ebenezer Webster. His life forms the necessary introduction to that of his celebrated son, and it is well worth study, because we can learn from it how much that son got from a father so finely endowed, and how far he profited by such a rich inheritance.

By his first wife, Ebenezer Webster had five children. By his second wife, Abigail Eastman, a woman of good sturdy New Hampshire stock, he had likewise five. Of these, the second son and fourth child was born on the eighteenth of January, 1782, and was christened Daniel. The infant was a delicate and rather sickly little being. Some cheerful neighbors predicted after inspection that it would not live long, and the poor mother, overhearing them, caught the child to her bosom and wept over it. She little dreamed of the iron constitution hidden somewhere in the small frail body, and still less of all the glory and sorrow to which her baby was destined.

For many years, although the boy disappointed the village Cassandras by living, he continued weak and delicate. Manual labor, which began very early with the children of New Hampshire farmers, was out of the question in his case, and so Daniel was allowed to devote much of his time to play, for which he showed a decided aptitude. It was play of the best sort, in the woods and fields, where he learned to love nature and natural objects, to wonder at floods, to watch the habits of fish and birds, and to acquire a keen taste for field sports. His companion was an old British sailor, who carried the child on his back, rowed with him on the river, taught him the angler's art, and, best of all, poured into his delighted ear endless stories of an adventurous life, of Admiral Byng and Lord George Germaine, of Minden and Gibraltar, of Prince Ferdinand and General Gage, of Bunker Hill, and finally of the American armies, to which the soldier-sailor had deserted. The boy repaid this devoted friend by reading the newspapers to him; and he tells us in his autobiography that he could not remember when he did not read, so early was he taught by his mother and sisters, in true New England fashion. At a very early age he began to go to school; sometimes in his native town, sometimes in another, as the district school moved from place to place. The masters who taught in these schools knew nothing but the barest rudiments, and even some of those imperfectly. One of them who lived to a great age, enlightened perhaps by subsequent events, said that Webster had great rapidity of acquisition and was the quickest boy in school. He certainly proved himself the possessor of a very retentive memory, for when this pedagogue offered a jack-knife as a reward to the boy who should be able to recite the greatest number of verses from the Bible, Webster, on the following day, when his turn came, arose and reeled off verses until the master cried "enough," and handed him the coveted prize. Another of his instructors kept a small store, and from him the boy bought a handkerchief on which was printed the Constitution just adopted, and, as he read everything and remembered much, he read that famous instrument to which he was destined to give so much of his time and thought. When Mr. Webster said that he read better than any of his masters, he was probably right. The power of expression and of speech and readiness in reply were his greatest natural gifts, and, however much improved by cultivation, were born in him. His talents were known in the neighborhood, and the passing teamsters, while they watered their horses, delighted to get "Webster's boy," with his delicate look and great dark eyes, to come out beneath the shade of the trees and read the Bible to them with all the force of his childish eloquence. He describes his own existence at that time with perfect accuracy. "I read what I could get to read, went to school when I could, and when not at school, was a farmer's youngest boy, not good for much for want of health and strength, but expected to do something." That something consisted generally in tending the saw-mill, but the reading went on even there. He would set a log, and while it was going through would devour a book. There was a small circulating library in the village, and Webster read everything it contained, committing most of the contents of the precious volumes to memory, for books were so scarce that he believed this to be their chief purpose.

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