He tried to farm it some, but did not amass a large sum, owing to his heavy losses in trying year after year to grow Saratoga potatoes for the Boston market.
No American, foreign or domestic, ever made a greater name for himself than Daniel Webster, but he was not so good a penman as Noah; Noah was the better pen-writer.
Noah Webster also had the better command of language of the two. Those who have read his great work entitled "Webster's Elementary Spelling-Book, or, How One Word Led to Another," will agree with me that he was smart. Noah never lacked for a word by which to express himself.
He was a brainy man and a good speller.
One by one our eminent men are passing away. Mr. Webster has passed away; Napoleon Bonaparte is no more; and Dr. Mary Walker is fading away.
This has been a severe winter on Red Shirt; and I have to guard against the night air a good deal myself.
It would ill become me, at this late date, to criticise Mr. Webster's work, a work that is now, I may say, in nearly every home and school-room in the land. It is a great book. I only hope that had Mr.
Webster lived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my books.
I hate to compare my books with Mr. Webster's, because it looks egotistical in me; but, although Noah's book is larger than mine, and has more literary attractions as a book to set a child on at the table, it does not hold the interest of the reader all the way through.
He has introduced too many characters into his book at the expense of the plot. It is a good book to pick up and while away a leisure hour, perhaps, but it is not a work that could rivet your interest till midnight, while the fire went out and the thermometer stepped down to 47° below zero. You do not hurry through the pages to see whether Reginald married the girl or not. Mr. Webster did not seem to care how the affair turned out.
Therein consists the great difference between Noah and myself. He doesn't keep up the interest. A friend of mine at Sing Sing, who secured one of my books, said he never left his room till he had devoured it. He said he seemed chained to the spot; and if you can't believe a convict who is entirely out of politics, whom, in the name of George Washington, can you trust?