Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GETTING INTO POLITICS, NOW The first remembrance I have of creeping into politics was in October, 1840, when I was only six yean old. I went to Potsdam village with my folks, to a ratification meeting and hung around the old "log cabin" erected on the square in front of the American House of which my Uncle Warren Clark was proprietor; watching the Coons climbing over it and occasionally taking a sup of "hard cider," which was free to everybody, and enjoying the campaign songs of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" until way along in the night when we trundled off home in the old lumber wagon a distance of ten miles and better. The next campaign of any note that I remember of was in the fall of 1844, when James K. Polk of Tennessee was at the head of the Democratic ticket for President of the United States, and that accomplished citizen, Hon. Silas Wright of Canton, was on the same ticket for Governor of the great state of New York. During that fall the usual number of campaign songs were in vogue, among which was one with the following chorus which many no doubt will also recollect. It ran along this way: "Poor Coony Clay is full of woe, Democracy has laid him low; Polk is the man, I told you so, For Polk and Dallas we're all the go." While the campaign that fall was going on, Governor Silas Wright while on his rounds, campaigning, came to our house for one of his favorite calls, and during his stay the neighborhood poet happened in and the Governor asked him what the political situation was about there, upon which the old poet took out of his pocket a scrap of paper and soon produced the following: "My friend you ask me what I know Of the campaign that's raging so; Therefore I'll tell it you in rhyme, In common sense if not sublime. The voters living here abouts, With ...