culture, and public spirit. Allen occupied a large house with
spacious grounds in a suburb of the city, and owned a farm on
which he bred fine cattle. He issued the "American Short-Horn
Herd Book," a standard authority for pedigree stock, and the
fifth edition, published in 1861, made a public acknowledgment of
"the kindness, industry, and ability" with which Grover Cleveland
had assisted the editor "in correcting and arranging the
pedigrees for publication."

With his uncle's friendship to back him, Cleveland had, of
course, no difficulty in getting into a reputable law office as a
student, and thereafter his affairs moved steadily along the road
by which innumerable young Americans of diligence and industry
have advanced to success in the legal profession. Cleveland's
career as a lawyer was marked by those steady, solid gains in
reputation which result from care and thoroughness rather than
from brilliancy, and in these respects it finds many parallels
among lawyers of the trustee type. What is exceptional and
peculiar in Cleveland's career is the way in which political
situations formed about him without any contrivance on his part,
and as it were projected him from office to office until he
arrived in the White House.

At the outset nothing could have seemed more unlikely than such a
career. Cleveland's ambitions were bound up in his profession and
his politics were opposed to those of the powers holding local
control. But the one circumstance did not shut him out of
political vocation and the other became a positive advantage. He
entered public life in 1863 through an unsought appointment as
assistant district attorney for Erie County. The incumbent of the