ceiving for six weeks' service $60. He afterward assisted in the preparation of several other volumes of this work, and the preface to the fifth volume (1861) acknowledges his services. In August, 1855, he secured a place as clerk and copyist for the law firm of Rogers, Bowen & Rogers, in Buffalo, began to read Blackstone, and in the autumn of that year was receiving four dollars a week for his work. He was admitted to the bar in 1859, but for three years longer he remained with the firm that. first employed him, acting as managing clerk at a salary of $600, soon advanced to $1,000, a part of which he devoted to the support of his widowed mother, who died in 1882. He was appointed assistant district attorney of Erie co., 1 Jan., 1863, and held the office for three years. At this time strenuous efforts were being made to bring the civil war to a close. Two of Cleveland's brothers were in the army, and his mother and sisters were dependent largely upon him for support. Unable to enlist, he borrowed money to send a substitute, and it was not till long after the war that he was able to repay the loan. In 1865, at the age of twenty-eight, he was the democratic candidate for district attorney, but was defeated by the republican candidate, his intimate friend, Lyman K. Bass. He then became law partner of Isaac V. Vanderpool, and in 1869 became a member of the firm of Lanning, Cleveland & Folsom. He continued a successful practice till 1870, when he was elected sheriff of Erie county. At the expiration of his three-years' term he formed a law partnership with his personal friend and political antagonist, Lyman K. Bass, the firm being Bass, Cleveland & Bissell, and, after the forced retirement from failing health of Mr. Bass, Cleveland & Bissell. The firm was prosperous, and Cleveland attained high rank as a lawyer, noted for the simplicity and directness of his logic and expression and thorough mastery of his cases.

In the autumn of 1881 he was nominated democratic candidate for mayor of Buffalo, and was elected by a majority of 3,530, the largest ever given to a candidate in that city. In the same election the republican state ticket was carried in Buffalo by an average majority of over 1,600; but Cleveland had a partial republican, independent, and “reform" movement support. He entered upon the office, 1 Jan., 1882. He soon became known as the "veto mayor," using that prerogative fearlessly in checking unwise, illegal, or extravagant expendi