Fremont Weekly Freeman

The Love of Home.

It is only shallow-minded pretenders, who either make distinguished origin a matter of personal merit, or obscure origin a matter of personal reproach. Taunt and scoffing at the humble condition of early life affect nobody in this country but those who are foolish enough to indulge in them, and they are generally sufficiently punished by the published rebuke. A man who is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition. I did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised among the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early as that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen hill, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the narrations and incidents, which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the living: and if ever I fail in affectionate veneration for him who raised it and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all domestic virtues beneath its roof, and through the fire and blood of a seven years revolutionary war, shrunk from no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity, be blotted forever from the memory of mankind!

Daniel Webster.