hat shine like silver
in their green setting; in the fields tilled, not by machinery, but by
the brain and hand of man. My folks are happy and contented. They
belong to themselves, live within their income, and fear no man."

Yes, and I have met the folks of whom he boasts, and in conversing
with them it seems easy for my mind to go back to the time when Mr.
Coolidge was a barefoot boy, roaming amid these beautiful hills. In
fact, everything about this rugged New England state, with its
farmhouses and barns that were built so many years ago, seems to carry
one back to the early history of our country.

As I looked upon the little country schoolhouse to which Mr. Coolidge
used to go, I thought of this story. One time, many years ago, there
lived a schoolmaster who had this unique custom. Every time he met a
boy who attended his school, he would lift his hat. When asked why he
did this, he replied, "Who can tell but that one of these boys will
some day become the chief ruler of the land; and inasmuch as I cannot
tell which one it will be, I must lift my hat to them all."

Surely if a teacher were to slight any of the boys, it would be the
one with freckles and red hair, for never before in the history of our
great country have we had a red-headed president.

Let us go back then in our imagination forty-four years and visit the
little red schoolhouse at Plymouth, Vermont, that was then better
known as the "Notch."

To reach Plymouth is not easy, for it is eleven miles from Ludlow,
which is the nearest railroad station, and the road from Ludlow is
rough and hilly. When we reach Plymouth, we are likely to drive by,
for the town is so small it doesn't seem possible that a future
President could have been born in such an out-of-the-way place.

The first man we meet in Plymouth is John Calvin Coolidge, the father
of our President. We soon learn that he keeps the village store, shoes
horses, collects insurance premiums, and runs a small farm. In
conversing with him, we discover that he is of staunch American
stock--in fact, he reminds us that his ancestors came to America in
1630, just ten years after the Pilgrims landed. In 1880, his
grandfather moved to the hill country that is now known as "Vermont,"
and for four generations the Coolidges have lived on the same farm.

But, we are not so much interested in the father as in the son, who,
we are told, is at school. As we approach the little country school,
we observe tha