A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [3]
It had been a disciplined household. Every evening the Cleveland children would gather for prayers and brace themselves to be drilled by Reverend Cleveland on the basic principles of the Christian faith. In this manner, Grover and his siblings committed to memory the entire handbook of the Presbyterian catechism. The Sabbath was strictly observed, work and any form of play were forbidden from sundown on Saturday until sundown on Sunday. On Saturday evening, the children lined up for their weekly baths; and on Sunday, all except the babies were required to attend Reverend Cleveland’s two-hour sermons.
Grover boarded a barge on the Erie Canal for the voyage to Cleveland, Ohio. Accompanying him was another young man from Holland Patent who was also seeking his fortune out west. The Erie Canal was the engineering marvel of the age; some even called it the Eighth Wonder of the World. It was a long and tedious crossing—a winding, sluggish process through beautiful pasture and virgin forest as a team of horses, or sometimes mules or oxen, towed the barge 365 miles across New York State, from Albany to its terminus in Buffalo, on the shores of Lake Erie. When they reached Buffalo, Grover, exhausted and covered in dust, informed his traveling companion that he had to visit his aunt and uncle in the Buffalo suburb of Black Rock. He said he’d be back in plenty of time to make the connection to Ohio. That was fine with the other fellow, and Grover went ashore.
Lewis Allen’s home was about two miles away. Grover walked straight down Niagara Street and stopped when he reached the Allen house at the corner of Ferry and Breckenridge. Four years had passed since Lewis had last seen his intense and eager nephew, and it was a jolt to see him again, for now Grover was mature and filled out.
Lewis was married to Grover’s Aunt Margaret, his late father’s sister. Lewis and Margaret and their two children lived on a fine estate on a bluff overlooking the Niagara River. Two great American statesmen, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, had stayed there as overnight guests when passing through Buffalo.
Lewis was aware that the Cleveland family had its struggles. Grover’s sister Susan had been born with deformed feet and was being treated by a specialist in New York City. Reverend Cleveland, a graduate of Yale, never made more than $600 a year. His sermons had been earnest, but had never dazzled. He had not sought fame, aspiring to be nothing more than a simple country cleric, what he’d called the “proper location for me.” He’d walked humbly with his God. To his prosperous brother-in-law, Richard’s was a life frittered away. “His modesty killed him,” Lewis once reflected. “I mean, he didn’t have push enough.”
Grover told his uncle that he was on his way to Ohio and thinking about becoming a lawyer. Lewis always had a high regard for Grover; here was a lad who was not afraid of hard work. When he was fourteen, Grover found a job at a general store for $50 a year, plus room and board. Grover woke at five each morning to open the store, build a fire, dust off the merchandise, sweep the floor, and get everything in shape before the boss arrived at seven. At night, he slept on a plain pine bed with a mattress filled with cornhusk. His room had no stove, and the only source of heat was a pipe from the store’s stove below. The privy was out back. When he was sixteen, still a boy but also a man, Grover spent a miserable year in charge of the boys’ dormitory at the New York Institution for the Blind in Manhattan, a job arranged by his brother William for a “pittance” of a salary.
As Lewis listened to Grover, something seemed off. What Grover was saying sounded so random. Law schools did not exist in those days. A young man became a lawyer by apprenticing for three or four years and then applying for