Excerpt from A Brief of Calvin From Cornerstone to Capstone

On July 4, 1872, 48 years ago, in the columns of a news sheet, The Blueberry, which succeeded occasionally In mak ing its appearance in the town of Plymouth, Vt. Appeared the laconic entr, y'', Born to Victoria J. Moor and John Calvin Coolidge, a man child, John Calvin, Jr. These tidings of great joy did not cause banks to close or business to be tied up, for that was a country of farmers only, and those that read it were tillers of the soil and not seers. However, the lit tle stranger, with a foresight, sound and characteristic, had chosen, as the day of his advent, one which the neighbors were bound to celebrate.

The child, an auburn-haired, smooth-faced babe, [with a proboscis somewhat attenuated, was as unique, as he lay in his cradle, as he was to be as a man. He seemed troubled. The atmosphere Of ambition enshrouded him. He seemed restless, and anxious for change and for progress. The baubles which divert and stimulate the prosaic young, seemingly, had no charm for him, nor did anything which tender hearts or Wise heads could plan. He lay in his new bed and cried, and when he tired of crying, he wept, and then he cried again. All this, apparently, with deliberation, and for a purpose, and as a means to an end. For the first effort. Of the child and the man has been always, not to play, but to think.

A mother, solicitous through unselfish love, sat by his side, intent upon bringing him peace; and a father, with the more selfish purpose of sleep. The family physician bent over the crib, with that rural versatility which had familiarized him with the whole gamut of bodily afflictions, from rhe'umatics to melancholia. Noted psychologists, too, were added to the throng, not alone for the advancement of medical science but with the hope of solving a problem which seemed to bathe all.

These all followed his infant gaze as it swept the plain walls of that Vermont farm house. They watched his eyes as they rested and became riveted upon the only decoration in that room, a portrait of that Great Liberator of the Dutch, of the low lands of Holland, a Prince of Orange and of Nassau, William the Silent. And they gave it to the child.

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