Their professors of history were old John Bowen, who had
once been a prisoner with the Indians; Robert Wise, who had sailed
round the world and fought in the Revolution on _both_ sides; George
Bayly, a pioneer, who saw the first tree felled in Northern New
Hampshire; women of the neighborhood, who had heard the midnight yell
of savages; and, above all, their own lion-hearted father, who had
warred with Frenchmen, Indians, wild nature, British troops, and
French ideas. "O," wrote Daniel once, "I shall never hear such
story-telling again!" It was not in the cold pages of Hildreth, nor in
the brief summaries of school-books, that this imaginative,
sympathetic youth had learned that part of the political history of
the United States--from 1787 to 1800--which will ever be its most
interesting portion. He learned it at town-meetings, in the
newspapers, at his father's house, among his neighbors, on election
days; he learned it as an intelligent youth, with a passionately loyal
father and mother, learned the history of the late war, and is now
learning the agonizing history of "reconstruction.
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