A Chance-Found Book the Turning Point in a United States Senator’s
Career.
HE wasn’t much of a boy to look at, this Dolliver boy of ten, trudging
off to school every morning in the West Virginia hamlet of Kingwood,
where the mountains are so brown in winter and so green in summer. To
the master of the little subscription school he was Jonathan Prentiss
Dolliver; to the comrades of sport and study he was just plain “Prent,”
a sturdy little chap, whose hair refused to stay combed, whose clothes
showed the rough-and-tumble of play, whose love for the mountains far
exceeded his love of arithmetic.
Somebody lost a copy of the “Congressional Record” about that time,—a
bound volume, containing many speeches of senators and representatives.
“Prent” found it. His boyish imagination was fired. Hour after hour he
pored over its pages, committing to memory several of the passages in
the speeches.
One day the school committee called,—an auspicious event in the little
schoolhouse. Young Dolliver was asked to give a declamation. To the
astonishment of all, the boy performed his task with force, vigor,
clearness and almost eloquence. Where did he get it?
“O, I can talk,” he declared; “dad’s a preacher, you know.”
Thus climbed into his first forum the witty, eloquent, magnetic
Dolliver, a United States senator from the state of Iowa at forty years
of age.
The match of ambition having been thus applied, the young lad studied
to greater advantage. A superb mother made sacrifices to aid him. How
these American mothers have ever helped! He took a course at the State
University at Morgantown, West Virginia. This was in 1875, and Prentiss
was only seventeen when he stepped forth with his diploma in his hand.