plorers; new records
have been made by rival aviators; while competitive and co-operative
activities in every line have known a phenomenal growth. New names
have been placed in the Pantheon of the immortals, new planets
discovered in the solar system, new stars added to the clear skies
of our nightly vision. Out of all the striving has come a sweeping
advance in lingual requirements. In most departments of Science,
Art, and Manufacture, the processes and methods of to-day are not
those of yesterday, and the doers of new things have freely coined
new words or given new meaning to old ones. The most complete and
exhaustive encyclopaedia of yesterday is to-day found not entirely
adequate to the already increased wants. Upon all these momentous
factors must these "Recollections," in one way or another, touch
from time to time.

Shelby M. Cullom.

Washington, D. C.
_July, 1911_.

FIFTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SERVICE

CHAPTER I
BIRTH TO ADMISSION TO THE BAR
1829 to 1855

Tides of migration set in about the close of the Revolutionary War,
originating in the most populous of the late Colonies (now States),
debouching from the western slopes of the mountain border-passes
into the headwaters of Kentucky's rivers, and mingling at last in
the fertile valley through which those rivers, in their lower
reaches, find an outlet into the Ohio.

The westward flowing current brought with it two families--the
Culloms of Maryland, and the Coffeys of North Carolina--who settled
in a beautiful valley, not far from the banks of the Cumberland,
which bore the euphonious name of Elk Spring Valley. Richard
Northcraft Cullom, of the first-named family, married Elizabeth
Coffey. They remained in Kentucky until seven children had been
born to them, I being the seventh, the date of my birth occurring
on the twenty-second day of November, 1829. We were a large family,
but not extraordinarily numerous for those times, there being five
brothers and seven sisters.

Kentucky was a Slave State, and my father did not believe in slavery.
He was fairly well to do, and after considering the situation he
determined to seek a home in a Free State and live there to the
end of his days.

A treaty with the Indians in 1784, at Fort Stanwix, had secured
from the Iroquois all claims to the lands which now make up the
States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At the time of our removal
the State of Illinois was only eleven years old, and but a small