A study of the men who have been called to the Presidency makes President Coolidge stand out from them all. For he is a new kind of public man. He is called “Silent Cal,” the inscrutable; he is an unguessable quantity, the shrewdest politician the White House has ever known, though on the surface he lacks all set and prescribed qualities of the successful man of politics.
He is spare in figure, auburn-haired, gray-eyed with rather thin lips and nose, in vigorous health and possessed of a dignity and reserve that have already become a national tradition.
He is a typical New Englander all of whose physical features proclaim his Pilgrim ancestry. The climate and conditions under which the early settlers of his section of the country and their descendants have battled to wrest from the rocky soil of coast line and mountain valleys the means of a livelihood, have moulded physiques and mentalities to meet force with wit and batter down obstacles with the power of brain as much as by brawn.
He is the son of the late John C. Coolidge and Victoria J. Moor Coolidge, one of the descendants of John and Mary Coolidge, early Pilgrims that settled in Watertown, Mass., about 1630. His ancestry runs through a long line of farmers of Massachusetts until his great-great-grandfather moved into Vermont, and he and his descendants tilled the soil, raised stock, tapped the trees for maple sugar, and were known and respected as substantial citizens of their community.
His mother died when he was but thirteen, and before he reached manhood his only sister passed away; these bereavements evidently drew father and son closer together.
In college—he attended Amherst—he was not a brilliant student, and the course was half over before his mates were really acquainted with him.
An analysis of all of the jumble and hodge-podge of tales that pour forth to fasten upon any man who rises to high places in his case leave beneath the froth an interesting picture that offers worth-while reading for the American boy of to-day. It paints for us a shy country lad of extreme slenderness with a mop of reddish hair and a heavier crop of awkwardness emphasized by unusual reticence and shyness. Considered “countrified,” he kept out of the way of the sophisticated city freshman, being embarrassed to a painful degree if he did happen to draw attention. But all the while that he battled within himself, the impressions gathered daily; his reserve created the habit of clear sharp thinking that found expression in a paucity of words, direct, clean-cut, and tinged with a dry wit that made his hearers smile at the humour while they remembered the common sense. In his senior year, he won the first prize, a gold medal, for the best essay on the Principles of the War for American Independence. The competition was open to all undergraduates of American colleges. By this feat he won the esteem of his college and disclosed a comprehensive and significant knowledge of his own country.
From all accounts, during college life, he was different from many lads in that he attended strictly to the business for which he had come. In all of the stories told of this phase of his career, the mention of girls is conspicuous by its absence. If he had the usual run of college love affairs and romances, no one else knew about them, and they have not come to light. All the reminiscent tales breaking forth from his classmates of thirty years ago show a deep and abiding regard for “Cooley,” as they called him, even though they poked fun at his reticence and lack of loquacity.
This very introspection provided him with a reserve fund of assurance that developed the self-confidence and poise to come through the graduation with high honours, a prize winner and orator of the class.
Not being in a financial position to take a course in law school, he studied law in the office of Judge Hammond of Northampton, Mass., and in less than two years was admitted to the bar and began his law practice there.