About this time the elder Webster disclosed to his son his purpose to send him to college. The talents of the boy and the counsels of friends pointed out that as a proper path, and that son himself will describe the effects of his father's information. "I could not speak," he says. "How could my father, I thought, with so large a family, and in such narrow circumstances, think of incurring so great an expense for me, and I laid my head on his shoulder and wept." That boy, however, had further difficulties to surmount. He had to leave one of his schools to assist his father in the hay harvest; he had, moreover, the hindrance of a slender and sickly constitution; but the Bible, side by side with some standard authors, had now become his English classics, while Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Demosthenes, and others, were his manuals in ancient literature. It was knowledge pursued under unusual difficulties, but, in spite of all, acquired to an unusual extent. So indomitable and persistent was the boy that in a few months he mastered the difficulties of the Greek tongue, and finally graduated at Dartmouth when he was eighteen years of age. Incidents are recorded which show that during his residence at college he was determined to hold the first place or none. It was at Dartmouth that Webster's patriotism first flashed forth with true American ardor, a harbinger to his whole future career. He had now mastered his boyish aversion to oratory, and on July 4, 1800, the twenty-fourth anniversary of American Independence, he delivered an oration full of patriotic sentiment, manifesting the decided bent of his mind, and deserving a place, in the opinion of some, among the works which he subsequently published. He was then only eighteen years of age.