on in
the church in which his father preached. William sent his second son,
Richard, to Yale, where he graduated with honors at the age of nineteen.
He turned to the Presbyterian church, studied theology at Princeton, and
upon receiving ordination began a ministerial career which like that
of many preachers was carried on in many pastorates. He was settled at
Caldwell, New Jersey, in his third pastorate, and there Stephen Grover
Cleveland was born, on March 18, 1837, the fifth in a family of children
that eventually increased to nine. He was named after the Presbyterian
minister who was his father's predecessor. The first name soon dropped
out of use, and from childhood he went by his middle name, a practice of
which the Clevelands supply so many instances that it seems to be quite
a family trait.

In campaign literature, so much has been made of the humble
circumstances in which Grover made his start in life that the unwary
reader might easily imagine that the future President was almost a waif.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. He really belonged to the most
authentic aristocracy that any state of society can produce--that which
maintains its standards and principles from generation to generation
by the integrity of the stock without any endowment of wealth.
The Clevelands were people who reared large families and sustained
themselves with dignity and credit on narrow means. It was a settled
tradition with such republican aristocrats that a son destined for a
learned profession--usually the ministry--should be sent to college,
and for that purpose heroic economies were practiced in the family. The
opportunities which wealth can confer are really trivial in comparison
with the advantage of being born and reared in such bracing conditions
as those which surrounded Grover Cleveland. As a boy he was a clerk in
a country store, but his education was not neglected and at the age of
fifteen he was studying, with a view to entering college. His father's
death ended that prospect and forced him to go to work again to help
support the family. Some two years later, when the family circumstances
were sufficiently eased so that he could strike out for himself, he
set off westward, intending to reach Cleveland. Arriving at Buffalo, he
called upon a married aunt, who, on learning that he was planning to
get work at Cleveland with the idea of becoming a lawyer, advised him
to stay in Buffalo where opportunities were better. Yo