or is typical of the picturesque and forceful figures which frontier
life so often developed. He was born in Connecticut, of parents recently
emigrated from Scotland. Three weeks after his birth his mother died,
and six years later his father, a sea captain, was drowned. The orphan
boy, brought up by strangers in Jefferson County, New York, experienced
the hardships of frontier life and developed that passion for knowledge
which so frequently is found in those to whom education is denied. When
he was sixteen, he had, enough of the rudiments to take charge of a
country school, and by teaching in the winter and working in the summer
he earned enough to enter Union College. He was unable to complete the
course, however, and turned to teaching in Ohio, where he restored to
decent order a school notorious for bullying its luckless teachers. But
teaching was not to be his career; indeed, Taylor's versatility for a
time threatened to make him the proverbial Jack-of-all-trades: he was
employed successively in a grist mill, a saw mill, and an iron foundry;
he dabbled in the study of medicine; and finally, in the year which
saw Wisconsin admitted to the Union, he bought a farm in that State.
Ownership of property steadied his interests and at the same time
afforded an adequate outlet for his energies. He soon made his farm a
model for the neighborhood and managed it so efficiently that he had
time to interest himself in farmers' organizations and to hold positions
of trust in his township and county.

By 1873 Taylor had acquired considerable local political experience
and had even held a seat in the state senate. As president of the State
Agricultural Society, he was quite naturally chosen to head the ticket
of the new Liberal Reform party. The brewing interests of the
State, angered at a drastic temperance law enacted by the preceding
legislature, swung their support to Taylor. Thus reenforced, he won the
election. As governor he made vigorous and tireless attempts to enforce
the Granger railroad laws, and on one occasion he scandalized the
conventional citizens of the State by celebrating a favorable court
decision in one of the Granger cases with a salvo of artillery from the
capitol.

Yet in spite of this prominence, Taylor, after his defeat for reelection
in 1875, retired to his farm and to obscurity. His vivid personality was
not again to assert itself in public affairs. It is difficult to account
for the fact that so few