CHAPTER I.
Buffeted About from Ocean to Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf
How I have escaped becoming President of the United States may not easily be explained; for, although not born in a log cabin, I have passed through most of those borderland vicissitudes and rugged experiences that characterize the lives of most of our chief executives, from George Washington down to the schoolmaster of Princeton.
I may not be able to trace my genealogy to Plymouth Rock, but even that may not wholly rob my story of human interest. My ancestry, nevertheless was decidedly Puritan. My mother, rest her saintly soul, was a Vermont school marm, from the little village of Bethel; my father, both preacher and doctor—a Homeopathic preacher, and an Allopathic doctor—sprang from the larger community of Killingly, Connecticut.
Nor was it an uncommon combination of pursuits three-quarters of a century ago, when preachers were so poorly remunerated that they must needs piece out scant incomes with earnings in more sordid spheres. Medical science was not far advanced in those early days, and doctors were wont to ride about the country, their saddle-bags stuffed with quinine and blue mass pills on one side, and, when also preachers, the other side containing the inevitable Bible and a few tomes of sacred song.
I often smile when I think of my father ministering to the sin-sick souls as well as the bodily ills of mankind
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