Just before the frost came the corn was gathered and shucked, and afterwards husked and put into the granary. During the winter the felled trees were sometimes cut for firewood, and those remaining in the spring were "junked," as it was called, and rolled into immense piles and burned, after which a crop of rye or wheat was sown, and hacked in with hoes, the roots of the trees preventing the movement of the harrow. The process of "junking" was a tedious one, as the burnt logs soon covered the axe-handle with smut, drying up the skin of the hands so they would often crack and bleed. It is said that young Daniel disliked this toil very much, and was among the earliest to devise "niggering," as it was called. In this process a stick of wood was laid across the log and lighted with fire, so it would burn down through the larger log, when fanned by the breeze, cutting it in two. In the early spring great preparation was made for tapping the maple-trees and boiling the sap down to sugar, which was always an agreeable employment for young Daniel. Another occupation of the boy on the farm was in weeding, pulling, and spreading flax, which boys generally dislike very much. After sheep were introduced in this locality there was a general washing of them in the brook about the first of May, after which sheep-shearing came on. Planting, hoeing, and haying was very hard work for the boys, and very few liked it. After the harvest something was done in lumbering, and the Websters, having a small saw-mill on their farm, made shingles and boards; although for many years shingles and clapboards were mostly split by hand. Daniel was peculiarly fond of hunting and fishing, a passion which lasted his whole lifetime. Minks, musk-rats, and now and then a fox, were caught in traps, though the latter was oftener shot. Small game, such as partridges and squirrels, were very plenty in the woods, and the skins of gray squirrels were most always used for winter caps for the boys. Larger game, like moose, deer, bears, wolves, and sometimes panthers, were taken. The schooling of boys was often among these scenes, where at home the evenings were spent in studying by the light of a pitch-pine knot. Itinerant ministers, in those days, mostly supplied the rustic pulpit, and visited their scattered flocks through many miles of travel. The boys were expected to be very decorous not only to the visiting ministers but to all older than themselves. Reverence was natural to Daniel Webster, and was not with him a mere matter of cultivation. TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE. Good Doctor, what has put it in your head To sail away across the ocean blue? Have you got tired of Boston? or, instead, Do you mistrust that we are tired of you? You wanted to see England, and you thought That you might go for once in fifty years: Well, your own way--just make your visit short; So here's _bon voyage_,--and also a few tears.