It was a great thing in Clarkton at the time, and when he came home, in June of 1919, there was a band waiting for him at the station, and he headed a triumphal march through the town. All of this he liked as well as the next person; he was a big, easygoing man, and memories of the war held no horrors for him; rather the reverse, for he was very proud of a scrapbook his father had started, filled mostly with clips from the Clarkton Minuteman, but also interspersed here and there with pieces from the Boston and New York papers. He had been born and brought up in Clarkton, where his parents had a small drygoods store, and his affection for the place was deep-seated and genuine; nor was he ambitious. He held the post of magistrate once and again he ran for and was elected to a term in the state legislature. But that was the extent of his political career; he preferred his commonplace practice and his office, which was in a loft building squarely in the center of town. In the course of the years, he married a tiny, very pretty Polish girl, had no children, lost his hair, and developed an enormous paunch.
