The Child's Book of American Biography Part 7

DANIEL WEBSTER

Before New England became such a busy, hurried sort of a place--say a hundred years ago--its men and women had time to listen to sermons that were more than an hour long, or to lecturers who talked three or four hours. When a public speaker used very fine words and could keep the people who listened to him wide awake and eager to hear more, he was called a great orator. An orator who dazzled our grandfathers and grandmothers was named Daniel Webster. He has been dead a long time, but the public speeches he made will never be forgotten.

Down in the business part of Boston can be seen, on a large building, a tablet which reads "The Home of Daniel Webster." On the terraced lawn of Ma.s.sachusetts' State house stands a bronze statue of Daniel Webster. And in old Faneuil Hall, Boston (which is called the Cradle of Liberty), there is a huge painting, as long as--well--as long as a street-car, which is called "Webster's Reply to Hayne." In this picture there are the portraits of one hundred and thirty senators and other men, but all of them are watching Daniel Webster. This is a picture well worth seeing, and Webster was well worth hearing.

Daniel Webster was born in New Hamps.h.i.+re. When he was a year old, his parents moved onto a farm which they called "The Elms" on account of the fine old trees which grew there. The older Webster boys did all kinds of heavy work, but as Daniel was not very strong, he was petted, and as he grew up, was asked to do only very light work. He rode the plow horse in the fields, drove the cows to pasture, and tended logs in his father's sawmill. When he was sent to do this last, he always took a book along, because it took twenty minutes for the saw to work its teeth through one of the tree-trunks, and he could not bear to waste all that time. He learned to read from his mother and sister almost as soon as he could talk, and he pored over the Bible for hours at a time.

Daniel's father kept a tavern, besides carrying on his farm. The teamsters who got their dinners there used to ask Daniel to read to them. His voice was deep and musical, and he gave such meaning to the words of the Bible that they thought him a wonder. His eyes were like black velvet, and his hair was as black and s.h.i.+ny as the feathers of a crow. Every one called him "little black Dan."

Daniel read everything he could find, and could recite whole poems and chapters of books when he was quite small. At a country store, just across the road from his father's tavern, he bought a cotton pocket-handkerchief on which the Const.i.tution of the United States was printed. After looking at the eagles and flags which were printed as a border, he sat down under one of the giant elm trees and learned by heart every word printed there.

Daniel liked to wander along the banks of the Merrimac River, and as he played in the fields and woods, he learned a great deal about animals and plants. Robert Wise taught him to fish for the salmon and shad that were plenty about there. Robert Wise was an old English sailor, who lived with his wife in a cottage on the Webster farm. He told Daniel famous stories of the strange countries he had sailed to. This man could not read, so he felt well repaid for carrying little black Dan on his shoulder, or paddling him up and down streams half a day at a time, if the boy would go after supper to his cottage and read aloud to him from books or newspapers.

Daniel loved all outdoor beauty, the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean, 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 Hamps.h.i.+re, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 cla.s.ses 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 Th.o.r.eAU

Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Th.o.r.eau.

Henry Th.o.r.eau, 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. Th.o.r.eau 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 Th.o.r.eaus were rather a prominent family in Concord. There were six of them, all told. The father, Mr. John Th.o.r.eau, was a pencil-maker. A hundred years ago this was a trade that brought good money. Mr. Th.o.r.eau 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 Th.o.r.eau, 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.