his work, and practically made his clients’ interests his own.  His judgment was sound, his industry indefatigable, his integrity unquestioned.  He was eminently well fitted for judicial service, but could never be induced to put himself in the way of preferment in that direction.  He was always the “working member” of the firms with which he was connected.  As an advocate, he made no pretensions to brilliancy; but in the preparation of cases, and in the cogent statement of principles involved, as well as in the effective presentation of pertinent facts, he found no superiors, and few equals, among his associates at the bar.

Caring nothing for the pecuniary rewards of labor, beyond the provision for his own modest wants and the comfort of those, in a measure, depending upon his assistance, Mr. Cleveland has accumulated no large fortune; although, with the opportunities at hand, had he made wealth his object, he might have secured it.  On the other hand, he has befriended many a poor client to his own cost; and, while failing in many cases to collect the fees which were his due, he has contributed to public and private charities with a liberal, but unostentatious hand.  Though he has never posed as a “working-men’s candidate” for official preferment, the laboring people of his city and section have long known him as the true and sympathetic friend of every honest son and daughter of toil.

When, in the autumn of 1881, the people of the great city of Buffalo, the third in the Empire State in population, and the second in commercial importance, tired of the corruption, the robbery, and oppression of the ring rule, which had fastened its grip upon them under long years of Republican ascendency, turned at last to the Democratic party for relief, the Democracy of the city saw in Grover Cleveland the one man of all others with whom as their candidate for mayor, they might reasonably hope to win, not simply a partisan triumph, but a victory for honest government in which all patriotic citizens might well rejoice.  Much against his own will, after repeated solicitation on the part of leading Democrats, and many Republicans, who appreciated his character and fitness, he again consented to become the candidate of his party for responsible office; and, at the election which followed, so great was the desire for a change in municipal matters, and so general the confidence in Mr. Cleveland as the man under whose direction the needed reform might be effected, that his majority for mayor was about three thousand five hundred, or nearly the same figure with which the Republican ticket had ordinarily triumphed.

Entering upon the duties of his office as mayor, January 1, 1882, he soon gave practical assurance of the fact that the people of Buffalo had made no mistake in the selection of their chief municipal servant.  In his first message to the Common Council, which was replete with sound, practical suggestions, he said:—­