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He was now a grown-up man. He was tall and strong and ambitious. He entered college the very year that Daniel graduated.

As for Daniel, he was now ready to choose a profession. What should it be?

His father wanted him to become a lawyer. And so, to please his parents, he went home and began to read law in the office of a Mr. Thompson, in the little village of Salisbury, which adjoined his father’s farm.

The summer passed by. It was very pleasant to have nothing to do but to read. And when the young man grew tired of reading, he could go out fishing, or could spend a day in hunting among the New Hampshire hills.

It is safe to say that he did not learn very much law during that summer.

But there was not a day that he did not think about his brother. Ezekiel had done much to help him through college, and now ought he not to help Ezekiel?

But what could he do?

He had a good education, and his first thought was that he might teach school, and thus earn a little money for Ezekiel.

The people of Fryeburg, in Maine, wanted him to take charge of the academy in their little town. And so, early in the fall, he decided to take up with their offer.

He was to have three hundred and fifty dollars for the year’s work, and that would help Ezekiel a great deal.

He bade good-bye to Mr. Thompson and his little law office, and made ready to go to his new field of labor. There were no railroads at that time, and a journey of even a few miles was a great undertaking.

Daniel had bought a horse for twenty-four dollars. In one end of an old-fashioned pair of saddle-bags he put his Sunday clothes, and in the other he packed his books.

He laid the saddle-bags upon the horse, then he mounted and rode off over the hills toward Fryeburg, sixty miles away.

He was not yet quite twenty years old. He was very slender, and nearly six feet in height. His face was thin and dark. His eyes were black and bright and penetrating–no person who once saw them could ever forget them.

Young as he was, he was very successful as a teacher during that year which he spent at Fryeburg. The trustees of the academy were so highly pleased that they wanted him to stay a second year. They promised to raise his salary to five or six hundred dollars, and to give him a house and a piece of land.

He was greatly tempted to give up all further thoughts of becoming a lawyer.

“What shall I do?” he said to himself. “Shall I say, ‘Yes, gentlemen,’ and sit down here to spend my days in a kind of comfortable privacy?”

But his father was anxious that he should return to the study of the law. And so he was not long in making up his mind.

In a letter to one of his friends he said: “I shall make one more trial of the law in the ensuing autumn.

“If I prosecute the profession, I pray God to fortify me against its temptations. To be honest, to be capable, to be faithful to my client and my conscience.”

Early the next September, he was again in Mr. Thompson’s little law office. All the money that he had saved, while at Fryeburg, was spent to help Ezekiel through college.

IX. DANIEL GOES TO BOSTON.

For a year and a half, young Daniel Webster stayed in the office of Mr. Thompson. He had now fully made up his mind as to what profession he would follow; and so he was a much better student than he had been before.

He read many law books with care. He read Hume’s History of England, and spent a good deal of time with the Latin classics.

“At this period of my life,” he afterwards said, “I passed a great deal of time alone.