XII.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

WE have now taken a brief survey of a goodly company of American statesmen with a view to determine, so far as possible, their assignment to positions in the history of their country, and to discover lessons in their careers for the incitement of others to persevere to attempts at achievement. These all have passed over to "the silent majority," and the places which they will each occupy will be fixed as time rolls on. As inflexible as the laws of life, as unsparing as death, is the verdict of posterity which will assign to each his ultimate station in the temple of fame. The process of determination began as soon as each man passed over into the pale realms of shade. The procession is still moving onward.

Grover Cleveland is nearest to us of these worthies because he, the twelfth on the list, is still in the land of the living. When the men of this time are removed beyond the confusion of immediate events, other generations will see the lost leaders with a clearer vision. Their characters will have taken their places in a true perspective. We can only guess at a venture what will be the dictum of that far-away jury. Cleveland, born in an obscure New Jersey village, chris

tened Stephen Grover Cleveland, the son of a rural clergyman, gave no more promise of future greatness than any of his predecessors in the long line of public men whose characteristics we have been considering. Like others of that company, young Cleveland appeared to take to the village store as affording one of the means of gaining a living that was readiest to his hand. Like them, too, he drifted about at first somewhat aimlessly, and it was not until 1855, when he was past eighteen years of age, that he really made a beginning in the career that was to land him finally in the White House. He studied law in Buffalo, N. Y., after taking a turn in the work of assisting in compiling "a short-horn herd-book." Vigorous in health, ambitious, manly, and full of courage, he showed himself in the Buffalo law office to be a youth of intelligence and decision of character. He was admitted to the Bar in 1859, but he remained four more years with the law firm where he imbibed the elements of his profession, and thus had eight good years of legal training. As office boy, student, and embryo barrister, he was thoroughly rooted and grounded in the theory and practice of law.

As a young practitioner at the bar he made himself so favorably known to the people of Erie County that his appointment as District Attorney in 1863 was taken as a fit and proper assignment to duty. So able did he fill the position to which he had been appointed that he was nominated by his party, the Democrats, for District Attorney in 1865, but was defeated by Mr. L. K. Bass,

with whom, later on, he was associated in a firm of lawyers. At the age of thirty-three, in 1870, he was elected Sheriff of Erie County, an office which he discharged with fairness and ability. Another step in advance was taken in 1881 when he was elected Mayor of the city of Buffalo by a majority of thirty-five hundred. Buffalo was then a Republican city, but local affairs had got into such a condition that the election of a mayor on a non-partisan ticket had become a necessity, and Cleveland, by his honest devotion to duty, his strict integrity and public spirit, had so commended himself to the people that he was chosen their candidate without regard to party lines.

The local government of Buffalo had drifted into a condition of slovenliness and carelessness which needed a strong hand to bring order out of chaos and to restore public affairs to a basis of economy and frugality. The lax way of doing things which had for years characterized the administration of public affairs had not only aroused the indignation and dissatisfaction of the people, but had attracted the attention of men who, like Cleveland, were determined that a better government was necessary to rescue the municipality from extravagance and corruption. He became at once so famous for his veto messages sent to the Common Council that he was generally known as the "Veto Mayor." These messages are interesting as a study of municipal government. They touch problems of daily occurrence and evince on the part of their author a determination to do good service