In March of my senior year my sister Abbie died. She was three years my junior but so proficient in her studies that she was but two classes below me in school. She was ill scarcely a week. Several doctors were in attendance but could not save her. Thirty years later one of them told me he was convinced she had appendicitis, which was a disease not well understood in 1890. I went home when her condition became critical and staid beside her until she passed to join our mother. The memory of the charm of her presence and her dignified devotion to the right will always abide with me. In the spring of 1890 came my graduation. The class had five boys and four girls. With so small a number it was possible for all of us to take part in the final exercises with orations and essays. The subject that I undertook to discuss was “Oratory in History,” in which I dealt briefly with the effect of the spoken word in determining human action. It had been my thought, as I was but seventeen, to spend a year in some of the larger preparatory schools and then enter a university. But it was suddenly decided that a smaller college would be preferable, so I went to Amherst. On my way there I contracted a heavy cold, which grew worse, interfering with my examinations, and finally sent me home where I was ill for a considerable time. But by early winter I was recovered, so that I did a good deal of work helping repair and paint the inside of the store building which my father still owned and rented. There was time for much reading and I gave great attention to the poems of Sir Walter Scott. After a few weeks in the late winter at my old school I went to St. Johnsbury Academy for the spring term. Its principal was Dr. Putney, who was a fine drill-master, a very exact scholar, and [Illustration: Allison Spence COLONEL JOHN C. COOLIDGE _While in the Vermont Senate_] an excellent disciplinarian. He readily gave me a certificate entitling me to enter Amherst without further examination, which he would never have done if he had not been convinced I was a proficient student. His indorsement of the work I had already done, after having me in his own classes for a term, showed that Black River Academy was not without some merit. During the summer vacation my father and I went to the dedication of the Bennington Battle Monument. It was a most elaborate ceremony with much oratory followed by a dinner and more speaking, with many bands of music and a long military parade. The public officials of Vermont and many from New York were there. I heard President Harrison, who was the first President I had ever seen, make an address. As I looked on him and realized that he personally represented the glory and dignity of the United States I wondered how it felt to bear so much responsibility and little thought I should ever know.