face of one who has reached in years the point whence he can look far back and down upon the world.

After he left college he

"Grover's father," says Mr. Allen, "was a good man. He was highly respected as a minister and was a preacher of fine abilities. But his modesty killed him. I mean that he didn't have push enough. He was conscientious and devoted to his work, but he never could take advantage of his opportunities for advancement. He never got along in the world as he might have done if he had been a little more worldly. He had a large family. went to teach school in Baltimore, and found his wife there. They had nine children. Cecil and Fred-the two who were lost at sea-went into the army when the civil war broke out. All the daughters are living. Four of them are married. Yes, the youngest one has inherited her father's literary abilities. The course of lectures she delivered last winter at Elmira College, on medical history, is said to have been very fine and very successful."

Mr. Allen's reminescences of young Cleveland, during his residence at the Black Rock homestead, are chiefly those of a familiar, boyish life, work and play mingled.

"Grover was a funny boy," says Mr. Allen. "He had a great deal of wit; was quick and lively. He was always getting into scrapes."

Apropos of this, the old gentleman laughs heartily as he recounts some of those insignificant incidents which occur in every boy's life.

"I have always had a farm on Grand Island. I keep fifty cows there now and shall cut one hundred tons of hay this year. Grover used to go to the farm with my boys, and they probably spent as much time in fishing as they did in work there. One day they pulled in a big muscolonge. You know what that is? A sort of pike, only bigger. This one had a head as large as a calf's, and a mouth that

looked very interesting. Grover wanted to examine it inside, and took a stick to open the muscolonge's jaws. But the fish was not quite dead; the stick slipped and Grover's fingers were caught as if it had been a steel trap. He squealed well, for his finger was about bitten off. The boys had to pry open the fellow's mouth to get Grover's hand free.

"One day he was getting some points about a yoke of steers I had just bought. 'Better not touch them oxen,' I said to him; but he thought he knew more about them than I did, and he wanted to find out still more. Well, they kicked him across the stable. This wasn't what he wanted to find

out; but he got that, too."

It was a life comparatively without incident that Grover Cleveland passed in his uncle's family; a life filled with good, honest work, with books and with farming, and also with the country sports in which a boy of his years finds variety and relaxation. But in the mean time he had in no way lost sight of the purpose which started him on his wanderings through Western New York, and his determination to make a beginning in his chosen profession and follow it up to success was as strong

as ever.

CHAPTER V.

Works at Authorship.-Looking for a Place in a Lawyer's Office. -Grover Takes a Desk with Rogers, Bowen and Rogers.-His Adventure with Blackstone.-Picking Up a Legal Education. -His Early Struggles with the World.-Settled at Last in Buffalo.

Mr. Allen's proposition to young Cleveland was that he should remain at his house and assist him in the compilation of the second volume of his American Herd Book, which he then had in hand.

He needed not only a clerk and copyist, but an assistant possessed of intelligence, judgment, and some degree of literary skill, as well as industry. He thought he could make Grover answer his purpose, and so he offered him a home and occupation.

Grover fully realized the expectations of his uncle. He did his work well and faithfully, and no doubt more than earned the compensation which he received, so far as a close commercial computation of values is concerned; although the value of the opportunity of establishing himself and enjoying a home while seeking a permanent location, was an advantage that cannot easily be estimated. Mr. Allen subsequently, in the preface to the fifth volume of his Herd Book, published in 1861, six years after the arrival of young Cleveland at Buffalo, and when the boy had acquired a position at the bar, and was beginning to show the stuff that was in him, made a handsome public acknowledgment of his services. In this preface he says:

"In the compilation of the second, third, fourth and fifth

volumes of this work, I take pleasure in expressing my acknowledgment to the kindness, industry, and ability of my young friend and kinsman, Grover Cleveland, Esq., of Buffalo, a gentleman of the legal profession, who has kindly assisted my labors in correcting and arranging the pedigrees for publication; and to him is a portion of the credit due for the very creditable display which our American shorthorns make before the agricultural public."

"I was impressed," says Mr. Allen, "with the quickness of intellect which the boy displayed. He had one of the readiest minds I have ever found; was prompt, accurate, and, in short, a remarkably bright young fellow. Like all boys, he was fond of fishing and shooting, and used to go off with my sons for such sport as there was around here; but when he had work to do he did it, and did it well."

Work on the second volume of the Herd Book lasted only through the summer months; and as the volume began to take complete shape in the fall, young Cleveland turned his thoughts more directly toward the accomplishment of his purpose of securing a place in some lawyer's office, where he might begin the preparation for the career which he had in his mind.

"I knew all the lawyers worth knowing in Buffalo," says Mr. Allen, "and I began to look around among them. One day I said, 'Grover, you had better go up and see Hibbard.' Well, he went up and saw him; but Hibbard asked him some question that Grover, who was a highspirited boy, thought impertinent, and he just turned. around and walked out of the office and back home again.

"Then I went into town myself and saw Rogers-Rogers, Bowen and Rogers it was then; they are all dead now but one, who is in Europe-and asked him if they didn't want a boy in the office. Rogers said they didn't want any one,

though they liked smart boys. I told him there was a smart boy at my house who wanted to come in and see what he could do. 'Well,' said Rogers, 'there's a table,' pointing to one in a corner.

"That's the way Grover went into their office. Rogers took him in as a favor to me, without seeing the boy at all. But they soon found out he was smart, and then they wanted to keep him. I told them to pay him what they could afford to pay."

It was in the fall of 1855 that Grover Cleveland, then eighteen years old, entered the law office of Rogers, Bowen and Rogers, with the privilege of using the law library of the firm, and picking up such knowledge of the work as might come in his way. He paid no fee for the privilege, but was expected to make himself useful in the line of the business. The story runs that the senior Rogers, the one who subsequently ran for Lieutenant-Governor on the ticket with Morgan, on his entrance into the office, took up a copy of Blackstone, and planted it on the table before the boy with a bang that made the dust fly, saying:

"That's where they all begin."

The lad did begin, with a zealous perseverance, on the somewhat forbidding volume, and kept on until he mastered it. They say that he never forgot one night that he spent alone in the office with the old jurist, he having become so absorbed in the study that he was locked in when the rest went home.

Grover Cleveland lived with his uncle during the early period of his occupancy of a desk in the office of Rogers, Bowen and Rogers. It was a distance of two miles from his home to that office, and as there was no public conveyance at that time he used to walk back and forth daily. In spite of the distance, over rugged roads, he was noticed as the most regular and punctual of the young men in the office.