The "foremost clinical cardiologist of the Midwest in his day" was a true son of the prairie whose love for teaching, native ability, and clinical curiosity earned for him this mythical title. James was born in Oak Park, Ill, a community to which his maternal grandfather traveled overland in a covered wagon, having migrated from England to the United States. He attended the Oak Park High School and the Rock River Seminary at Mount Morris, Ill; liberal arts training was received at the University of Michigan, where he came under the influence of M. C. Tyler, colonial historian and student of Chaucer. This influence has been cited as an important force in Herrick's literary interests, medical and nonmedical, in his professional years.1 Herrick returned to Illinois, taught school at Peoria and Oak Park, and began the part-time study of medicine at Rush Medical College in 1885, graduating MD in