CHAPTER III.
THE MORNING OF POWER.
College life, as we have it in this country, is a romance. In the midst of an age in whose thought poetry has found little lodgment; in which love has become a matter of business, and literature a trade, the American college is the home of sentiment, of ideas, and of letters. The old institutions of romance have crumbled into ruins. The armed knight, the amorous lady, the wandering minstrel, the mysterious monastery, the mediæval castle with its ghosts and legends exist only in history. But behind the academic walls there are passages-at-arms as fierce, loves as sweet, songs as stirring, legends as wonderful, secrets as well transmitted to posterity as ever existed in the brain of Walter Scott.
It was to such an enchanted life at Williams College, that Garfield betook himself in the month of June, 1854. To go through college is like passing before a great number of photographic cameras. A man leaves an indelible picture of himself printed on the mind of each student with whom he comes in contact.
When Garfield entered Williams, he was over six feet high, as awkward as he was muscular, and looking every inch a backwoodsman. He had made great progress, however, in his previous studies, and successfully passed his examination for the junior class. A young fellow, named Wilbur, a cripple, came with him from Ohio, and the couple from the first attracted much attention. A classmate writes: “Garfield’s kindness to his lame chum was remarked by every body.”
But many of the college boys were the sons of rich men. The strapping young fellow from Ohio was, in his own language, a “greeny” of the most verdant type. His clothes were homespun, and the idea of fitting him seemed never to have entered their maker’s head. His language was marred by uncouth provincialisms. His face had a kindly and thoughtful expression, on which the struggle of boyhood had left little trace, but this could not save him from many a cut. To a coarser-grained man, the petty indignities, the sly sarcasms, the cool treatment of the Eastern collegians would not have been annoying, but there are traces of a bitter inward anguish in Garfield’s heart at this time. To make it worse, he had not entered a lower class, where he perhaps might have had companions as green as himself, or, at least, comparative obscurity; but, entering an upper class, from whose members rusticity had long since disappeared, he was considered a legitimate target for the entire body of students.
But he had brains, and nowhere in the world, does ability rise to the top, and mediocrity sink to the bottom, so surely and swiftly, as at college. In a short time, his commanding abilities began to assert themselves. In the class-room, he was not only a profound and accurate scholar, but his large brain seemed packed with information of every sort, and all ready for use at a moment’s notice. His first summer before the regular fall term he spent in the college library. Up to that time he had never seen a copy of Shakespeare; he had never read a novel of Walter Scott, of Dickens, or of Thackeray.
The opportunity was a golden one. On the shelves of the Williams’ library were to be found the best books of all the ages. Plunging in at once, he read poetry, history, metaphysics, science, with hardly a pause for meals. He felt that his poverty had made him lose time, and that the loss must be made good. His powerful frame seemed to know no fatigue, and his voracious and devouring mind no satiety. Weaker minds would have been foundered. Not so with this western giant. Note-book in hand, he jotted down memoranda of references, mythologic, historical or literary, which he did not fully understand, for separate investigation. The ground was carefully gleaned, notwithstanding the terrific speed. This outside reading was kept up all through his stay at Williams.
Hon. Clement H. Hill, of Boston, a classmate of Garfield, writing of his studies and reading, says: “I think at that time he was paying great attention to German, and devoted all his leisure time to that language. In his studies, his taste was rather for metaphysical and philosophical studies than for history and biography, which were the studies most to my liking; but he read besides a good deal of poetry and general literature. Tennyson was then, and has ever been since, one of his favorite authors, and I remember, too, when Hiawatha was published, how greatly he admired it, and how he would quote almost pages of it in our walks together. He was also greatly interested in Charles Kingsley’s writings, particularly in Alton Locke and Yeast. I first, I think, introduced him to Dickens, and gave him Oliver Twist to read, and he roared with laughter over Mr. Bumble.”
There are but few stories told of Garfield’s life at Williams, and there is a reason behind the fact. The college “yarn” is generally a tradition of some shrewd trick, some insubordination to discipline, or some famous practical joke. Every college has a constantly growing treasury of such legend lore. There are stories of robbed hen-roosts, pilfered orchards, and plundered watermelon patches; of ice-cream stolen from the back porch just after the guests had assembled in the parlor; of mock processions, of bogus newspapers, of wedding invitations gotten out by some rascally sophomore, for the marriage of some young couple, who were barely whispering the thought in their own imaginations. There are stories of front doors painted red; of masked mobs ranging through town on Halloween, and demanding refreshment; of the wonderful theft of the college bell, right when a watchman with loaded revolver was in the building, of hairbreadth escapes down lightning rods, and of the burning in effigy of unpopular professors. There is a story told in nearly every college in the country, of how a smart fellow, to revenge himself, sprinkled several barrels of salt on the street and sidewalk in front of a professor’s house; how he drove all the wandering cattle in the village to that part of the street, and how no digging, nor sweeping, nor scalding water, nor flourished broom handles did any good toward driving away the meek but persistent kine, who, with monotonous bell and monotonous bellow, for months afterward, day and night, chose that spot for their parlor.
But no such legends hung round the name of Garfield at Williams College. He was there under great pecuniary pressure, and for a high and solemn purpose. He was there for work, not play. Every thing which looked like a turning aside from the straight and narrow way, was indignantly spurned. At one time he caught the fever for playing chess. He was a superior player, and enjoyed the game immensely. But when he found it carried him to late hours, he denied himself the pleasure entirely.
But he stepped at once to the front rank as a debater in his literary society. His power of statement, his grasp of facts, his quick repartee, combined to make him the leading orator of the college. His method of preparation showed the mind of a master. The subject of debate he would divide into branches, and assign a separate topic to each of his allies for investigation, distributing each topic according to their respective qualities of mind. Each man overhauled the college library, gathering and annotating all the facts and authorities upon his particular branch of study, and submitted his notes to Garfield, who would then analyze the mass of facts, draw up the propositions, which were to bear down like Macedonian phalanxes upon the enemy, and redistribute the branches of the question to his debaters for presentation on the rostrum.
His mind never seemed foggy. Odd scraps of information, which ordinary men would have been unable or afraid to use, he wielded like a club about his adversaries’ heads. In a public debate in his junior year, the preceding speaker had used a lengthy and somewhat irrelevant illustration from Don Quixote. When Garfield’s turn for reply came, he brought down the house by saying: “The gentleman is correct in drawing analogies between his side of this question and certain passages in the life of Don Quixote. There is a marked resemblance, which I perceive myself, between his argument and the scene of the knight attacking the windmill; or, rather, it would be more appropriate to say that he resembles the windmill attacking the knight.” At the college supper, which followed the public entertainment, Garfield’s extensive acquaintance with standard literature was being talked about, when he laughingly told his admiring friends that he had never read Don Quixote, and had only heard a mention of the tournament between the crazy knight and the windmill.
His classmates, in writing of the impressions made on them by their college chum, speak much of his warm, social disposition, and his fondness for jokes. He had a sweet, large, wholesome nature, a hearty and cheerful manner, which endeared him most closely to the men among whom he spent the two years of college life. By the poorer and younger students he was almost worshiped for his kindliness and encouragement. He was a warm friend of every boy in the college; but for the weak, or sick, or poverty stricken, his heart overflowed with generous sympathy.
His morals were as spotless as the stars. A classmate, who knew him well, writes: “I never heard an angry word, or a hasty expression, or a sentence which needed to be recalled. He possessed equanimity of temper, self-possession, and self-control in the highest degree. What is more, I never heard a profane or improper word, or an indelicate allusion from his lips. He was in habits, speech, and example, a pure man.”
Williamstown, Massachusetts, where the college is located, is one of the most beautiful spots on the continent, and its magnificent mountain scenery made a deep impression on the mind of the tall Ohioan, who had been reared in a level country. It is only to people who live among them that mountains are unimpressive, and, perhaps, even then they make their impress on the character, giving it a religious loftiness and beauty.
An old institution of Williams College was “Mountain Day”—an annual holiday given for expeditions to some picturesque point in the vicinity. On one of these occasions, an incident revealed the courage and piety of “Old Gar,” as the boys lovingly called their leader. They were on the summit of “Old Greylock,” seven miles from the college. Although it was midsummer, the mountain top was cool; and, as the great glowing sun sank behind the western range, the air became chilly. The group of collegians were gathered about a camp-fire that blazed up briskly in the darkening air. Some were sitting, some standing, but all were silent. The splendor and solemnity of the scene; the dark winding valley; the circling range of mountains; the over-bending sky; the distant villages, with the picturesque old college towers; the faint tinkle of the cowbell; the unspeakable glories of the sunset,—
filled every thoughtful heart with religious awe. Just as the silence became oppressive, it was broken by the voice of Garfield: “Boys, it is my habit to read a chapter in the Bible every evening with my absent mother. Shall I read aloud?” The little company assented; and, drawing from his pocket a well-worn Testament, he read, in soft, rich tones, the chapter which the mother in Ohio was reading at the same time, and then called on a classmate to kneel on that mountain top and pray.
The two months’ vacation of Garfield’s first winter at college was spent at North Pownal, Vermont, teaching a writing-school, in a school-house where, the winter before, Chester A. Arthur had been the regular teacher. But, at that time, Garfield only knew his predecessor by name, and the men whose destinies were in the future to become so closely intertwined did not become acquainted.
At the end of his junior year Garfield’s funds were exhausted; but, after a consultation with his mother, he resolved to borrow the money to complete his course, rather than lose more time. His first arrangement for the money failed; but Dr. J. P. Robison, of Bedford, who, five years before, had prophesied so much of the widow’s son, readily assumed the burden, asking no security but his debtor’s word, but receiving a life insurance policy which Garfield, who seemed to inherit an apprehension of sudden calamity, insisted on procuring.
At the beginning of his senior year, he was elected one of the editors of the Williams Quarterly, the college paper. His associates in the work were W. R. Baxter, Henry E. Knox, E. Clarence Smith, and John Tatlock. The pages of this magazine were enriched by a great number of the products of his pen. His originality of thought and pleasant style is nowhere better shown than in the following extract from a brilliant article upon Karl Theodore Korner:
“The greater part of our modern literature bears evident marks of the haste which characterizes all the movements of this age; but, in reading these older authors, we are impressed with the idea that they enjoyed the most comfortable leisure. Many books we can read in a railroad car, and feel a harmony between the rushing of the train and the haste of the author; but to enjoy the older authors, we need the quiet of a winter evening—an easy chair before a cheerful fire, and all the equanimity of spirits we can command. Then the genial good nature, the rich fullness, the persuasive eloquence of those old masters will fall upon us like the warm, glad sunshine, and afford those hours of calm contemplation in which the spirit may expand with generous growth, and gain deep and comprehensive views. The pages of friendly old Goldsmith come to us like a golden autumn day, when every object which meets the eye bears all the impress of the completed year, and the beauties of an autumnal forest.”
Another article, which attracted great attention at the college, was entitled “The Province of History.” The argument was that history has two duties, the one to narrate facts with their relations and significance, the other to show the tendency of the whole to some great end. His idea was that history is to show the unfolding of a great providential plan in the affairs of men and nations. In the course of the article he said:
“For every village, State, and nation there is an aggregate of native talent which God has given, and by which, together with His Providence, He leads that nation on, and thus leads the world. In the light of these truths, we affirm that no man can understand the history of any nation, or of the world, who does not recognize in it the power of God, and behold His stately goings forth as He walks among the nations. It is His hand that is moving the vast superstructure of human history, and, though but one of the windows were unfurnished, like that of the Arabian palace, yet all the powers of earth could never complete it without the aid of the Divine Architect.
“To employ another figure—the world’s history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and of every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and, though there have been mingled the discord of roaring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come. The record of every orphan’s sigh, of every widow’s prayer, of every noble deed, of every honest heart-throb for the right, is swelling that gentle strain; and when, at last, the great end is attained—when the lost image of God is restored to the human soul; when the church anthem can be pealed forth without a discordant note, then will angels join in the chorus, and all the sons of God again ‘shout for joy.’”
This is really an oration. It is not the style of the essayist. It is the style of the orator before his audience. The boldness of the figure which would captivate an audience, is a little palling to the quiet and receptive state of the reader. The mental attitude of Garfield when he wrote that passage was not that of the writer in his study, but of the orator on the platform with a hushed assemblage before him. It will be noticed that this characteristic of style only became more marked with Garfield after he had left the mimic arena of the college.
But the idea embodied in this article is as significant and characteristic as its expression. In some form or other most of the world’s great leaders have believed in some outside and controlling influence, which really shaped and directed events. To this they attributed their own fortune. Napoleon called and believed himself to be “The Child of Destiny.” Mohammed was a fatalist:
Buddha believed in fatalism. So did Calvin. Julius Cæsar ascribed his own career to an overweening and superimposed destiny. William III. of England, thought men were in the grasp of an iron fate.
The idea expressed in this article of a providential plan in human things, according to which history unfolds itself, and events and men are controlled, is not seen here for the last time. It will reappear at intervals throughout the life of the man, always maintaining a large ascendancy in his mind. It is not a belief in fate, destiny, or predestination, but it is a kindred and corresponding one. Whether such beliefs are false or true, whether superstitious or religious, does not concern the biographer. It is sufficient that Garfield had such a belief, and that it was a controlling influence in his life.
But Garfield’s literary efforts in college also took the form of poetry. The affectionate nature, and lofty imagination, made his heart the home of sentiment, and poetry its proper expression. We reproduce entire a poem entitled “Memory,” written during his senior year. At that time, his intended profession was teaching, and it is possible that the presidency of a Christian college was “the summit where the sunbeams fell,” but in the light of events the last lines seem almost prophetic.
It is said that every one has in some degree a prophetic instinct; that the spirit of man reaching out into the future apprehends more of its destiny than it admits even to itself. If ever this premonition finds expression, it is in poetry. On the following page will be found a gem, torn from the setting of Garfield’s college life, which was published during his senior year, and is equally suggestive:
There is considerable poetic power here. The picture of the mountain oak, with its dead leaves shattered by the November blasts, and its bare branches uplifted to the dark unpitying heavens, is equal to Thomson. This poem, like the one on Memory, is full of sympathy with nature, and a somber sense of the sorrowful side of human nature.
But a college boy’s feelings have a long range upward and downward. Nobody can have the “blues” more intensely, and nobody can have more fun. We find several comic poems by Garfield in his paper. One of them is a parody on Tennyson’s “Light Brigade,” and served to embalm forever in the traditions of Williams a rascally student prank which the Freshmen played upon their Sophomore enemies. One stanza must suffice for these pages. It was called “The Charge of the Tight Brigade”:
The winter vacation of his senior year Garfield spent at Poestenkill, a little place a few miles from Troy, New York. While teaching his writing school there, he became acquainted with some members of the Christian Church and through them with the officers of the city schools in Troy. Struck by his abilities, they resolved to offer him a position in the schools at a salary of $1,500 a year. The proposition was exciting to his imagination. It meant much more money than he could hope for back in Ohio; it meant the swift discharge of his debt, a life in a busy city, where the roar of the great world was never hushed. But on the other hand, his mother and the friends among whom he had struggled through boyhood, were back in Ohio.
The conflict was severe. At last his decision was made. He and a gentleman representing the Troy schools were walking on a hill called Mount Olympus, when Garfield settled the matter in the following words:
“You are not Satan, and I am not Jesus, but we are upon the mountain, and you have tempted me powerfully. I think I must say, ‘Get thee behind me.’ I am poor, and the salary would soon pay my debts and place me in a position of independence; but there are two objections. I could not accomplish my resolution to complete a college course, and should be crippled intellectually for life. Then my roots are all fixed in Ohio, where people know me and I know them, and this transplanting might not succeed as well in the long run as to go back home and work for smaller pay.”
During his two years at Williams, a most important phase of Garfield’s intellectual development was his opinion upon questions of politics. It will be remembered that in 1855, the volcanic flames from the black and horrible crater of slavery began to burst through the crust of compromise, which for thirty years had hidden the smoldering fires. In Kansas, civil war was raging. Determined men from all parts of the country had gone there to help capture the State for their side, and in the struggle between the two legislatures, the slavery men resolved to drive the Free-soilers from the State. The sky was red with burning farm houses. The woods were full of corpses of antislavery men with knives sticking in their hearts. Yet the brave Free-soilers held their ground. One man who had gone there from Ohio, had two sons literally chopped to pieces. His name was John Brown. He also remained, living six weeks in a swamp, in order to live at all.
The entire country was becoming aroused. Old political parties were breaking up, and the lines reformed upon the slavery question. Garfield, though twenty-three years old, had never voted. Nominally he was an antislavery Whig. But he took little interest in any party. So far, the struggle of his own life and the study of literature had monopolized his mind.
In the fall of 1855, John Z. Goodrich, a member of Congress from the western district of Massachusetts, delivered a political address in Williamstown. Garfield and a classmate attended the speaking. The subject was the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, and the efforts of the antislavery minority in Congress to save Kansas for freedom. Says the classmate, Mr. Lavallette Wilson, of New York: “As Mr. Goodrich spoke, I sat at Garfield’s side, and saw him drink in every word. He said, as we passed out, ‘This subject is entirely new to me. I am going to know all about it.’”
The following day he sent for documents on the subject. He made a profound and careful study of the history of slavery, and of the heroic resistance to its encroachments. At the end of that investigation, his mind was made up. Other questions of the day, the dangers from foreign immigration, and from the Roman Catholic Church, the Crimean war, the advantage of an elective judiciary, were all eagerly debated by him in his society, but the central feature of his political creed was opposition to slavery. His views were moderate and practical. The type of his mind gave his opinions a broad conservatism, rather than a theoretical radicalism. Accordingly, when on June 17, 1856, the new-born Republican party unfurled its young banner of opposition to slavery and protection for Kansas, Garfield was ready for the party as the party was ready for him.
It was shortly before his graduation, when news of Fremont’s nomination came, the light-hearted and enthusiastic collegians held a ratification meeting. There were several speakers, but Garfield, with his matured convictions, his natural aptitude for political debate, and his enthusiastic eloquence, far outshone his friends. The speech was received with tremendous applause, and it is most unfortunate that no report of it was made. It was natural that much should have been expected of this man by the boys of Williams. He seemed to be cast in a larger mold than the ordinary. The prophecy of the class was a seat in Congress within ten years. He reached it in seven.
At graduation he received the honor of the metaphysical oration, one of the highest distinctions awarded to graduates. The subject of his address was: “Matter and Spirit; or, The Seen and Unseen.” One who was present says:
“The audience were wonderfully impressed with his oratory, and at the close there was a wild tumult of applause, and a showering down upon him of beautiful bouquets of flowers by the ladies;” a fitting close to the two years of privation, mortification and toil.
Speaking of his mental characteristics, as developed at Williams, Ex-President Hopkins, one of the greatest metaphysicians of the age, writes:
“One point in General Garfield’s course of study, worthy of remark, was its evenness. There was nothing startling at any one time, and no special preference for any one study. There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject, and sound sense. As he was more mature than most, he naturally had a readier and firmer grasp of the higher studies. Hence his appointment to the metaphysical oration, then one of the high honors of the class. What he did was done with facility, but by honest and avowed work. There was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort and of rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions of what was undertaken. Hence there was a steady, healthful, onward and upward progress.”
To pass over Garfield’s college life without mention of the influence of President Hopkins upon his intellectual growth, would be to omit its most important feature. No man liveth to himself alone. The intellectual life of great men is largely determined and directed by the few superior minds with which they come in contact during formative periods. The biography of almost any thinker will show that his intellectual growth was by epochs, and that each epoch was marked out and created by the influence of some maturer mind. The first person to exercise this power is, in most cases, the mother. This was the case with Garfield. The second person who left an indelible impression on his mental life, and supplied it with new nourishment and stimulant, was Miss Almeda Booth. The third person who exercised an overpowering personal influence upon him was Mark Hopkins. When Garfield came to Williams, his thought was strong, but uncultured. The crudities and irregularities of his unpolished manners were also present in his mind.
He had his mental eye-sight, but he saw men as trees walking. But under the influence of Hopkins, the scales fell from his eyes. The vast and powerful intellect of the man who was stepping to the front rank of the world’s thinkers, imparted its wealth of ideas to the big Ohioan. Through President Hopkins, Garfield’s thought rose into the upper sky. Under the inspiration of the teacher’s lectures and private conversation, the pupil’s mind unfolded its immense calyx toward the sun of speculative thought. From this teacher Garfield derived the great ideas of law, of the regularity and system of the Universe, of the analogy between man and nature, of God as the First Cause, of the foundation of right conduct, of the correlation of forces, of the philosophy of history. In after years, Garfield always said that whatever perception he had of general ideas came from this great man. One winter in Washington the National Teacher’s Association was in session, and Garfield frequently dropped in to take a share in the discussion. One day he said: “You are making a grand mistake in education in this country. You put too much money into brick and mortar, and not enough into brains. You build palatial school-houses with domes and towers; supply them with every thing beautiful and luxuriant, and then put puny men inside. The important thing is not what is taught, but the teacher. It is the teacher’s personality which is the educator. I had rather dwell six months in a tent, with Mark Hopkins, and live on bread and water, than to take a six years’ course in the grandest brick and mortar university on the continent.”
With graduation came separation. The favorite walks around Williamstown were taken for the last time. The last farewells were said, the last grasp of the hand given, and Garfield turned his face toward his Ohio home. He was at once elected instructor in the ancient languages at the Western Eclectic Institute, later known as Hiram College. Two years later he became president of this institution, overrun with its four hundred pupils. The activities of the man during this period were immense. Following his own ideas of teaching, he surcharged the institution with his personality. The younger student, on entering, felt the busy life which animated the place. With his teaching, Garfield kept up an enormous amount of outside reading; he delivered lectures on scientific and miscellaneous subjects, making some money by it; he engaged in public debates on theologic and scientific questions; he took the stump for the Republican party; on Sundays he preached in the Disciples Church; in 1857 he took up the study of the law, mastered its fundamental principles, and was admitted to practice at the Cleveland bar on a certificate of two years’ study. Yet with all this load on him, he impressed himself on each pupil in Hiram College as a personal friend. One of these, Rev. J. L. Darsie, gives a vivid picture of Garfield at this time:
“I recall vividly his method of teaching. He took very kindly to me, and assisted me in various ways, because I was poor and was janitor of the buildings, and swept them out in the morning and built the fires, as he had done only six years before, when he was a pupil at the same school. He was full of animal spirits, and he used to run out on the green almost every day and play cricket with us. He was a tall, strong man, but dreadfully awkward. Every now and then he would get a hit on the nose, and he muffed his ball and lost his hat as a regular thing. He was left-handed, too, and that made him seem all the clumsier. But he was most powerful and very quick, and it was easy for us to understand how it was that he had acquired the reputation of whipping all the other mule-drivers on the canal, and of making himself the hero of that thoroughfare when he followed its tow-path ten years earlier.
“No matter how old the pupils were, Garfield always called us by our first names, and kept himself on the most familiar terms with all. He played with us freely, scuffled with us sometimes, walked with us in walking to and fro, and we treated him out of the class-room just about as we did one another. Yet he was a most strict disciplinarian, and enforced the rules like a martinet. He combined an affectionate and confiding manner with respect for order in a most successful manner. If he wanted to speak to a pupil, either for reproof or approbation, he would generally manage to get one arm around him and draw him close up to him. He had a peculiar way of shaking hands, too, giving a twist to your arm and drawing you right up to him. This sympathetic manner has helped him to advancement. When I was janitor he used sometimes to stop me and ask my opinion about this and that, as if seriously advising with me. I can see now that my opinion could not have been of any value, and that he probably asked me partly to increase my self-respect, and partly to show me that he felt an interest in me. I certainly was his friend all the firmer for it.
“I remember once asking him what was the best way to pursue a certain study, and he said: ‘Use several text-books. Get the views of different authors as you advance. In that way you can plow a broader furrow. I always study in that way.’ He tried hard to teach us to observe carefully and accurately. He was the keenest observer I ever saw. I think he noticed and numbered every button on our coats.
“Mr. Garfield was very fond of lecturing to the school. He spoke two or three times a week, on all manner of topics, generally scientific, though sometimes literary or historical. He spoke with great freedom, never writing out what he had to say, and I now think that his lectures were a rapid compilation of his current reading, and that he threw it into this form partly for the purpose of impressing it on his own mind.
“At the time I was at school at Hiram, Principal Garfield was a great reader, not omnivorous, but methodical, and in certain lines. He was the most industrious man I ever knew or heard of. At one time he delivered lectures on geology, held public debates on spiritualism, preached on Sunday, conducted the recitations of five or six classes every day, attended to all the financial affairs of the school, was an active member of the legislature, and studied law to be admitted to the bar. He has often said that he never could have performed this labor if it had not been for the assistance of two gifted and earnest women,—Mrs. Garfield herself, his early schoolmate, who had followed her husband in his studies; and Miss Almeda A. Booth, a member of the faculty. The latter was a graduate of Oberlin, and had been a teacher of young Garfield when he was a pupil; and now that he had returned as head of the faculty, she continued to serve him in a sort of motherly way as tutor and guide. When Garfield had speeches to make in the legislature or on the stump, or lectures to deliver, these two ladies ransacked the library by day, and collected facts and marked books for his digestion and use in the preparation of the discourses at night.”
In the canvass of 1877, after one of his powerful stump speeches, Garfield was lying on the grass, talking to an old friend of these Hiram days. Said he:
“I have taken more solid comfort in the thing itself, and received more moral recompense and stimulus in after-life from capturing young men for an education than from any thing else in the world.”
“As I look back over my life thus far,” he continued, “I think of nothing that so fills me with pleasure as the planning of these sieges, the revolving in my mind of plans for scaling the walls of the fortress; of gaining access to the inner soul-life, and at last seeing the besieged party won to a fuller appreciation of himself, to a higher conception of life, and to the part he is to bear in it. The principal guards which I have found it necessary to overcome in gaining these victories are the parents or guardians of the young men themselves. I particularly remember two such instances of capturing young men from their parents. Both of those boys are to-day educators of wide reputation—one president of a college, the other high in the ranks of graded school managers. Neither, in my opinion, would to-day have been above the commonest walks of life unless I or some one else had captured him. There is a period in every young man’s life when a very small thing will turn him one way or the other. He is distrustful of himself, and uncertain as to what he should do. His parents are poor, perhaps, and argue that he has more education than they ever obtained, and that it is enough. These parents are sometimes a little too anxious in regard to what their boys are going to do when they get through with their college course. They talk to the young men too much, and I have noticed that the boy who will make the best man is sometimes most ready to doubt himself. I always remember the turning period in my own life, and pity a young man at this stage from the bottom of my heart. One of the young men I refer to came to me on the closing day of the spring term and bade me good-bye at my study. I noticed that he awkwardly lingered after I expected him to go, and had turned to my writing again. ‘I suppose you will be back again in the fall, Henry,’ I said, to fill in the vacuum. He did not answer, and, turning toward him, I noticed that his eyes were filled with tears, and that his countenance was undergoing contortions of pain.
“He at length managed to stammer out: ‘No, I am not coming back to Hiram any more. Father says I have got education enough, and that he needs me to work on the farm; that education don’t help along a farmer any.’
“‘Is your father here?’ I asked, almost as much affected by the statement as the boy himself. He was a peculiarly bright boy—one of those strong, awkward, bashful, blonde, large-headed fellows, such as make men. He was not a prodigy by any means. But he knew what work meant, and when he had won a thing by the true endeavor, he knew its value.
“‘Yes, father is here, and is taking my things home for good,’ said the boy, more affected than ever.
“‘Well, don’t feel badly,’ I said. ‘Please tell him that Mr. Garfield would like to see him at his study before he leaves the village. Don’t tell him that it is about you, but simply that I want to see him.’ In the course of half an hour the old gentleman, a robust specimen of a Western Reserve Yankee, came into the room, and awkwardly sat down. I knew something of the man before, and I thought I knew how to begin. I shot right at the bull’s-eye immediately.
“‘So you have come up to take Henry home with you, have you?’ The old gentleman answered: ‘Yes.’ ‘I sent for you because I wanted to have a little talk with you about Henry’s future. He is coming back again in the fall, I hope?’
“‘Wal, I think not. I don’t reckon I can afford to send him any more. He’s got eddication enough for a farmer already, and I notice that when they git too much they sorter git lazy. Yer eddicated farmers are humbugs. Henry’s got so far ’long now that he’d rother hev his head in a book than be workin’. He don’t take no interest in the stock, nor in the farm improvements. Every body else is dependent in this world on the farmer, and I think that we’ve got too many eddicated fellows settin’ round now for the farmers to support.’
“‘I am sorry to hear you talk so,’ I said; ‘for really I consider Henry one of the brightest and most faithful students I ever had. I have taken a very deep interest in him. What I wanted to say to you was, that the matter of educating him has largely been a constant out-go thus far; but, if he is permitted to come next fall term, he will be far enough advanced so that he can teach school in the winter, and begin to help himself and you along. He can earn very little on the farm in winter, and he can get very good wages teaching. How does that strike you?’
“The idea was a new and a good one to him. He simply remarked: ‘Do you really think he can teach next winter?’
“‘I should think so, certainly,’ I replied. ‘But if he can not do so then, he can in a short time, anyhow.’
“‘Wal, I will think on it. He wants to come back bad enough, and I guess I’ll have to let him. I never thought of it that way afore.’
“I knew I was safe. It was the financial question that troubled the old gentleman, and I knew that would be overcome when Henry got to teaching, and could earn his money himself. He would then be so far along, too, that he could fight his own battles. He came all right the next fall; and, after finishing at Hiram, graduated at an Eastern college.”
“The other man I spoke of was a different case. I knew that this youth was going to leave mainly for financial reasons also, but I understood his father well enough to know that the matter must be managed with exceeding delicacy. He was a man of very strong religious convictions, and I thought he might be approached from that side of his character; so when I got the letter of the son telling me, in the saddest language that he could muster, that he could not come back to school any more, but must be content to be simply a farmer, much as it was against his inclination, I revolved the matter in my mind, and decided to send an appointment to preach in the little country church where the old gentleman attended. I took for a subject the parable of the talents, and, in the course of my discourse, dwelt specially upon the fact that children were the talents which had been intrusted to parents, and, if these talents were not increased and developed, there was a fearful trust neglected. After church, I called upon the parents of the boy I was besieging, and I saw that something was weighing upon their minds. At length the subject of the discourse was taken up and gone over again, and, in due course, the young man himself was discussed, and I gave my opinion that he should, by all means, be encouraged and assisted in taking a thorough course of study. I gave my opinion that there was nothing more important to the parent than to do all in his power for the child. The next term the young man again appeared upon Hiram Hill, and remained pretty continuously till graduation.”
One relic of his famous debates at this time, on the subject of Christianity, still exists in a letter written to President Hinsdale, which we give: