CHILDHOOD SCENES
pretense, he looked upon merit with great respect. His judgment was vindicated by the fact that more of her kin folks than he could have realized had been and were to become people of merited distinction.
The prevailing dress in our neighborhood was that of the countryside. While my father wore a business suit with a white shirt, collar and cuffs, which he always kept clean, the men generally had colored shirts and outer garments of brown or blue drilling. But they all had good clothes for any important occasions.
I was clad in a gingham, shirt with overalls in the summer, when I liked to go barefooted. In the winter these were changed for heavy wool garments and thick cowhide boots, which lasted a year.
My grandmother Coolidge spun woolen yarn, from which she knitted us stockings and mittens. I have seen her weave cloth, and when I was ten years old I had a frock which came from her loom. We had linen sheets and table cloths and woolen bed blankets, which she had spun and woven in earlier days, I have some of them now. My grandfather
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