Salmon Portland Chase. of finance and statistics and writing a history of the times from the point of view of the Treasury of the United States. These details and such a history are forbidden to the com pass of this article. Mr. Chief Justice Chase was born at Cornish, X. H., on January 13, 1808. There the first eight vears of his life were spent, "ambitious to be at the head of my class and without much other ambition," as he said in a letter to Mr. John T. Trowbridge, "with old Ascutney looking down upon me every morning from his mists, and every evening from his royal panoply of gilded clouds, the old Connecticut River rolling by, and the Connecticut Valley meadows and New Hampshire hills over which to roam." His was the ordinary childhood of the country boy of New England three generations ago, with plentv of work to do about the farm and the elementary instruction of the country school. When he was eight years old his father moved to Keene, and in a few months thereafter died, leaving a muchencumbered estate and a widow with a large family. Mrs. Chase seems to have been a typical New England woman, a self-sacri ficing mother. She had a shrewd capability of getting large returns from a very meagre income. Apparently dissatisfied with the school of Keene she sent her son, Salmon, to Windsor, Vt, for the winter of 1817-18, where he was under the charge of a Colonel Dunham, who taught him Latin. Upon his return from Windsor to Keene the boy began Greek in 1819 with a Reverend Mr. Barstow, and also took up Euclid. His uncle, Philander Chase, was the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, an able, energetic and de voted clergyman, who in April, 1820, persuaded Salmon's mother to allow him to take his nephew into his household at Worthington, O. There the twelve-year-old boy continued his school with earnestness and energy until 1822, when the Bishop was offered and accepted the presidency of Cin cinnati College, the duties of which position
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he assumed in November of that year. Salmon Chase went thither with his uncle and entered the college as a' freshman. But he soon conceived the idea that by a little extra study he could be advanced to the sophomore class. This he accomplished in a short time. The Bishop, grieving over the poverty of his diocese, concluded to resign his presidency of the college and go to Eng land to solicit funds for a theological seminary. So in the summer of 1823 he went East, en route for London, taking Salmon with him. From Troy the boy walked home to Keene across the moun tains. Soon after his return he was engaged to teach the school at Roxbury, N. H. His initial success in that position, however, was so small that he was discharged in less than a fortnight. In February, 1824, he entered the junior class of Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1826, meanwhile ekeing out his scanty means by teaching school. He had a predilection for the ministry, but finally concluded to adopt the profession of the law. In December, 1826, he proceeded to Frederick, Md., where he intended to establish a school. But hope of success there vanished and he went on to Washington, where he advertised that he would open a select classical school for not more than twenty pupils. He had only one candidate for instruction. In despair he solicited his uncle, Dudley Chase, a senator from Ver mont, to procure him a clerkship in one of the government departments. This applica tion the Roman senator sternly refused. Mr. Chase, however, soon obtained a position to teach in Mr. Plumley's school, which appar ently was a fashionable one at that time in Washington, patronized by the sons of such men as Mr. Clay, Mr. Wirt and General Ber nard. In September, 1827, he became a law student in the office of William Wirt, at that time Attorney General of the United States and in the maturity of his splendid genius. He also added to his income by writing, and was prosperous in a small way, although the
