indication we possess of his college life, as well as his own repeated
assertions, confirms the conclusion that Nature had formed him to use
the products of other men's toil, not to add to the common fund. Those
who are conversant with college life know very well what it means when
a youth does not take to Greek, and has an aversion to mathematics.
Such a youth may have immense talent, and give splendid expression to
the sentiments of his countrymen, but he is not likely to be one of
the priceless few of the human race who discover truth or advance
opinion. It is the energetic, the originating minds that are
susceptible to the allurements of difficulty.

On the other hand, Daniel Webster had such qualities as made every one
feel that he was the first man in the College. Tall, gaunt, and
sallow, with an incomparable forehead, and those cavernous and
brilliant eyes of his, he had much of the large and tranquil presence
which was so important an element of his power over others at all
periods of his life. His letters of this time, as well as the
recollections of his fellow-students, show him the easy, humorous,
rather indolent and strictly correct "good-fellow," whom professors
and companions equally relished. He browsed much in the College
library, and had the habit of bringing to bear upon the lesson of the
hour the information gathered in his miscellaneous reading,--a
practice that much enlivens the monotony of recitation. The half-dozen
youths of his particular set, it appears, plumed themselves upon
resembling the early Christians in having all things in common. The
first to rise in the morning--and he must have been an early riser
indeed who was up before Daniel Webster--"dressed himself in the best
which the united apartments afforded"; the next made the best
selection from what remained; and the last was happy if he found rags
enough to justify his appearance in the chapel. The relator of this