EULOGY ON JAMES A. GARFIELD JAMES G. BLAINE When a president, a senator, a congressman, or other man of importance in the government of the United States dies, it is the custom to deliver speeches about him and his life work. These speeches are called "eulogies" (ū'ló-giz). This selection is taken from the speech of James G. Blaine, delivered before both houses of Congress following the death of President Garfield. James G. Blaine was secretary of state in President Garfield's cabinet, and afterwards a candidate for the presidency. President James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin in Ohio, in 1831, in great poverty. He labored at any kind of honest work to get an education. He worked as a farm-boy, canal boatman, carpenter, and also at many other things, thus earning his own way through college. As a boy, his greatest desire was to go to sea, and he was prevented from doing so only by the fact that the captain of a Lake Erie vessel drove him from the deck when he applied for a place as a sailor. While a very young man, he became president of Hiram College, at Hiram, Ohio. When the Civil War broke out, he quickly became a colonel, and later, by his bravery and ability, he became a major general. He was elected a member of Congress while on the battle-field. He served his country in Congress ably for many years, and was elected United States Senator from Ohio in 1880. But before he had taken his seat in the Senate, he was elected President of the United States. A short time after he became president, while he was waiting for a train in the station at Washington, he was shot by a miscreant named Guiteau (gï tō'). The nation was heartbroken, and waited anxiously from day to day, hoping that he would recover. From boyhood, Garfield had loved the sea. So he was taken to Elberon on the Atlantic coast in New Jersey with the hope that there he would have the best chance of recovery. But he died there on September 19, 1881. This selection from Blaine's very beautiful and eloquent speech tells of his last days. If you will study it till you understand it, you will love to remember this selection. Learn the meanings of these words before reading the eulogy: foreboding: a feeling that something unhappy is about to occur. premonition: a warning that some serious thing is about to happen. weariness, that makes one great darkness: death. frenzy: a wild burst of anger, demoniac: demon-like. rage, or other feeling. wantonness: the state of doing evil things without any cause for so doing, as Guiteau's murder of Garfield against assassin: one who kills or tries whom he had no possible cause craving: a hungry desire or for hatred. aspirations: one's hopes and plans for doing great things. quail to tremble or shrink with fear. relinquishment: a giving up. languor (lan'ger): а great wish for something. manifold voices: the many voices of the waves. farther shore: Heaven.. EULOGY ON JAMES A. GARFIELD Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning, James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; not the slightest 5 premonition of danger clouded his sky; his terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, 10 to silence, and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its 15 hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail, not alone for one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, 20 through weeks of agony, which was not less agony because silently borne, - with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes! Whose lips may tell? What brilliant, broken plans; what baffled, high 25 ambitions; what sundering of strong, warm manhood's friendships; what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys, not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons, 5 just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. 10 His countrymen were thrilled with an instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his 15 suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet, he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. 20 As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. 25 Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its far sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to 5 break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning, which only the rapt and parting soul may know. 10 Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION what wish of boyhood 1. Tell of the life of James A. 6. How did President Garfield 13. It would be of great value face the awful change? 7. How did he bear his suffer ing? 8. What reasons had he for wanting to live? 9. As he drew near to death, to you to read a good life of Garfield. He is one of the best examples of what an American boy can do when he sets out bravely to achieve. |