Jump to content

Page:The Autobiography Of Calvin Coolidge.djvu/27

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHILDHOOD SCENES

heritance and turned it all over to them with the income, besides giving the boy $800 of his own money when he was eighteen years old, the same as he did my father. He was fond of riding horseback and taught me to ride standing up behind him. Some of the horses he bred and sold became famous. In his mind, the only real, respectable way to get a living was from tilling the soil He therefore did not exactly approve having his son go into trade.

In order to tie me to the land, in his last sickness he executed a deed to me for life of forty acres, called the Lime Kiln lot, on the west part of his farm, with the remainder to my lineal descendants, thinking that as I could not sell it, and my creditors could not get it, it would be necessary for me to cultivate it. He also gave me a mare colt and a heifer calf, which came of stock that had belonged to his grandfather.

Two days after I was two months old, my father was elected to the state legislature. By a curious coincidence, when my son was the same age I was elected to the same office in Massachusetts. He was reelected twice, the term being two years, and, while

[15]