His mother, observing his love
of play and his equal love of books, said he "would come to something
or nothing, she could not tell which"; but his father, noticing his
power over the sympathies of others, and comparing him with his
bashful brother, used to remark, that he had fears for Ezekiel, but
that Daniel would assuredly make his way in the world. It is certain
that the lad himself was totally unconscious of possessing
extraordinary talents, and indulged no early dream of greatness. He
tells us himself, that he loved but two things in his youth,--play and
reading. The rude schools which he trudged two or three miles in the
winter every day to attend, taught him scarcely anything. His father's
saw-mill, he used to say, was the real school of his youth. When he
had set the saw and turned on the water, there would be fifteen
minutes of tranquillity before the log again required his attention,
during which he sat and absorbed knowledge.
"We had so few books," he records in the exquisite fragment
of autobiography he has left us, "that to read them once or
twice was nothing.
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