Judge Alphonso Taft was Secretary of War, and later Attorney General, in Grant’s Cabinet while his son Will was at college, but before the latter graduated, the family had returned to Cincinnati, so he came straight home and entered at once upon a law course in the Cincinnati Law School. It was at that time, when he was still a student and working as a law reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial , that I met him. It was at a coasting party one winter’s night, I remember very well, when I went with a party of young people, including the Charles Tafts, to coast down a fine steep hill in Mt. Auburn. Will Taft was there, and after being introduced to me he took me down the hill on his big bobsled. After that we met very frequently.
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