Daniel Webster was not much of a success as a student while at Exeter. He admits this in his autobiography. He seemed unable to recite in a room full of boys; and although he spent many hours in study, he could never, having learned his lesson, make a good recitation. The strangest thing of all, however, is that he could not be induced to speak in public; and when the day came on which it was usual for his class to declaim, although he had learned his piece, he was utterly incapable of rising from his seat when his name was called. "The kind and excellent Buckminster," says Webster in his autobiography, "sought especially to persuade me to perform the exercise of declamation, like other boys, but I could not do it. Many a piece did I commit to memory, yet when the day came when the school elected to hear declamations, when my name was called and I saw all eyes turned to my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the instructors frowned; sometimes they smiled. Mr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated most winningly that I would venture, but I could never command sufficient resolution. When the occasion was over, I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification." To think that such should have been the nature of the boy who afterward became so famous an orator, and whose speeches, as a man, have become classical, and whose presence "has graced the courts of justice in the national halls of legislation"! Daniel Webster was so greatly discouraged at this inability to declaim before his comrades, and by the treatment he received at the hands of his fellow-students because of his awkwardness and shyness, that at the end of his first term he said to Dr. Abbott, the principal, that he thought he would not return after Christmas. The principal knew very well that Webster's rustic manners and coarse clothing had been the cause of the misconduct of the other boys toward him, and he therefore encouraged Webster to remain in school, and assured him that he was a better scholar than most of the boys in his class, and he promised the lad that if he would return at the commencement of the next term, he would be placed in a higher class, where he should "no longer be hindered by the boys who cared more for play and dress than for solid improvement." Webster says that these were the first encouraging words that he had ever received with regard to his studies, and because of them he resolved to return to school, and to work with all the ability he possessed.