twelve or thirteen years old. He took special interest in running the farm machinery. He continued his farm work during his college vacations and in this way became strong and healthy. The practical knowledge gained from his farm life was a great aid in practising his profession as a lawyer, especially before juries. He was one of eight children; and his father desired that each one should graduate at the academy, but he did not plan to send any to college. It was only by urgent solicitation and consenting to have his expenses at college taken from his share of whatever might fall to him, that Sereno gained the consent of his father to advance the money, and he matriculated at the university of Rochester in 1860 and was graduated A.B. 1864, receiving his master's degree in course. He studied law in the office of Cox and Avery in Auburn, 1864-66, and was admitted to practice in June, 1866, at the bar of the supreme court of the state. He was a law partner with John T. M. Davie, 1869-70 and practised alone 1870-82. His political service began in 1867 when he was elected by the Republican party city clerk of Auburn, serving two years. He was supervisor of a ward of Auburn, 1871-72; district attorney of Cayuga county, 1873-79; and president of the board of education for the city, 1879-82. He then entered the national government as representative from the twenty-sixth congressional district of New York in the forty-eighth United States Congress, 1883-85, and from the twenty-seventh district in the forty-ninth Congress, 1885-87. He failed to receive the nomination of his party for the fiftieth Congress and it went with the election to Newton W. Nutting, of Oswego, who had been elected from the twenty-fourth district to the forty-eighth Congress and who died October 15, 1889. Mr. Payne served in the forty-eighth Congress on the committees on the Revision of the Laws and on Expenditures in the Interior Department; and in the forty-ninth Congress on the committee on Elections and was continued on the committee on the Revision of the Laws. He was elected to the fifty-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative Nutting, and was placed on the committees on Ways and Means, and Railways and Canals, and on the special committee to investigate the Sergeant-at-Arms' office. In the fifty-second, fifty-third, fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth, fifty-sixth, fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth Congresses he was continued as a member of the committee on Ways and Means and also served on the committee on Expenditures in the Department of Justice. In
