Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/29

Rh day, was a plain, wooden, two-storied affair, having a pitched roof front and back. Downstairs, there was a little parlor, with a porch, where, years afterward, the struggling young lawyer delivered more than one political address. This house was standing up to 1895, although a part of the lower floor had been turned into a store. When the march of improvement demanded that the house be cut in two and part of it be removed, the man who had been born there was running for the Presidency, and some of the timbers of the building were manufactured into canes to be used by the campaign clubs marching in his honor!

In those days the town of Niles was little more than a struggling village, with a score of houses, one or two stores, a blacksmith shop, and a tavern or road hotel. The house stood close to the road, and next to it was a field with some trees, where William McKinley's brothers and sisters were wont to play. The town is nine miles northwest of the city of Youngstown, on the line of several railroads, and is given up chiefly to the iron industry.