Admirers of our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, will be gathering at Plymouth Notch, Vermont tonight to mark the centenary of his swearing the presidential oath. It was a century ago that word reached the remote hamlet of President Harding’s death, leading an inaugural for the ages. It’s an opportunity to mark one of the most idiosyncratic transfers of presidential power — and to weigh the legacy of the man known as Silent Cal.

Coolidge, at the time the vice president, was visiting his father’s home at Plymouth Notch while Harding was on an extended trip to California. They hadn’t seen one another for weeks. The Vermont village lacked telephone service or even a telegraph wire. So it was the postmaster of a neighboring town who, not long after midnight on August 3, 1927, knocked on the door with the sad news from the Coast.