who fought so much oppression and crime could do so without descending to invective or abuse. That was the secret of his success. If clergymen could follow in his footsteps many an empty tabernacle would be crowded on the Sabbath. In a sense, the biography of a writer discloses the hidden springs and motives for the development of his career. It would be difficult for a writer not springing from the people to fight the people’s battles with the pen. A man of the people like Abraham Lincoln represented them thoroughly because he was of them, and at no time in his life did his opportunities or tendencies cause him to forget his original environment. Jacob Huff was born among the “great mass of humanity” and his development came like Lincoln’s through struggles and disappointments, aided by perseverance and hard work, until his voice, clear and sympathetic, was heard above the multitude. Some day an appreciative state will seek out and mark the lowly cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains where he first saw the light. Like Plato and many another wise man of the past, his message will live in his disciples, and grow brighter, and more necessary with the advancement of time. It was in such a cabin that Lincoln was born in the Kentucky wilds that Jacob Huff was ushered into being in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, on January 31, 1851. His father was John Huff, a typical backwoodsman, sturdy, brave, and good natured. His mother was a German girl, Eve Kalmbach, whose parents had left the Rhine country and cleared a homestead high among lonely Pennsylvania hills. His father’s mother was Elizabeth Walker, of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and from her came the strain of humor, and perseverance that did so much to weld his destiny into a successful whole. His mother is described as kindly and intelligent, with a mystic side to her nature, observable in her distinguished son’s traits of sentiment and tenderness. From earliest youth Jacob Huff knew little but the most grinding toil. His first occupation, however, was rather pleasurable, and he always liked to reminisce on the subject. In 1864, Colonel James Williams Quiggle, of McElhattan, directly across the Susquehanna from Jacob’s mountain home, had conceived the idea of starting an “American Tea Industry.” It is a known fact that the Pennsylvania mountains produce a tea plant that rivals in flavor the choicest product of Japan. Thousands of acres of wild lands were either bought or optioned, and a tea house after a Japanese design was erected on a plateau back of the smaller of the two McElhattan mountains. Men and boys in considerable numbers were engaged to pick, sort, and dry the leaves, and little Jacob hearing of the work, tramped down from the high mountains and started for the “tea camp,” his first situation away from home. Darkness had come on soon after he reached McElhattan, and he spent the night with a family who lived at the “X Roads,” there meeting