Its warriors, prophets, saints and apostles were characters as real and familiar to his active imagination as were the people he had actually met. In his work and at his play he saw and felt more than some other boys, because of this power to call about him imaginary characters.

It may have been this habit of thinking on distant things that caused him, as a workman, to meet with so many accidents.

He found much comfort in the society of a little black dog, which seemed to understand the language and wishes of James, like a human being. The dog was considered a wonder by the other boys. For several years the little creature was seen with James at all his work, whether chopping wood, riding the horses for the plow, or going to the pastures for the neighbors' cows.

To all the beasts of the farm he was a kind and patient instructor, teaching them many curious and useful things. In all this he was, however, under his mother's careful oversight, and most faithfully did she watch over the "four saplings," of which James was the youngest, and which her husband, on his death-bed, had said he must leave to her care. For him she felt and exhibited that special solicitude which mothers usually feel for their youngest child. She was determined that he should avail himself of the school privileges during the few winter months in which it was held, and she labored very hard to supply him with the necessary clothes and books. The teachers of the school parted with Mrs. Garfield

in the spring with great reluctance, for the schoolhouse being on one corner of her farm, they were often obliged to seek favors from her, and thus became familiar friends. At no place in all the district was the teacher more welcome than at Mrs. Garfield's cabin, and although the loft in her home was perhaps more lonely, and the bed less easy than many others, they were glad when the time came in their "boarding around," to go to her abode. Many years afterwards they told of her love for learning, and of her desire that her children should have a thorough education.

James was favored with opportunities for reading which the other members of that industrious family did not get. It was usually accidental, however. He was a careless, awkward boy in the use of tools in his work, and was often laid up by self-inflicted wounds. He cut his feet with his axe or scythe. He wrenched his back by the fall of a fence rail upon him. He fell from the barn upon a pile of wood. So that while he was not perhaps more careless or awkward than boys of his age usually are, yet he was more often confined to the house as a result of accidents, and the hours of his retirement he most earnestly employed in studying all the books they had in the house, and all he could borrow of the neighbors. It was to his credit that he used his books with great care, and any neighbor was willing to intrust their volumes to him. His neighbors say that he learned much more in his early days by reading history and studying stories of scientific discov

ery out of school than he ever gained from teachers. He was greatly interested in the debates and literary exercises which were often held on winter evenings at the school-house; and it is said that, as a critic, he was dreaded by some of the old men before he was ten years of age

In 1842, when he was about eleven years old, the boys in Orange, by the advice of "Uncle Amos,” organized a lyceum of their own, and it was the first place of the kind in which James ever ventured to speak.

His speech was not preserved, even in tradition But the speech of the last disputant has never ceased to be a funny circumstance in the minds of the old people who heard of it at the time. The subject for discussion contained a clause in which it was resolved that navigation was of superior importance to some other branch of human industry. The young orator "supposed a case" where a meal of victuals awaited. a hungry, drunken man, but he could not get to them. 'Now," said the speaker, "that man is too drunk to navigate himself. He will have no supper. Now, of what use are all the beans, potatoes, sausages, pork and doughnuts to a man who can't navigate?” That speech was conclusive, and by a unanimous vote it was seriously declared that it was of the highest importance that men be able "to navigate."

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These debates quickened James's desire for reading, and in less than two years he had read and remembered so much concerning the current topics of lyceum debates that he successfully held his own as

Those

a "principal" debater with the old men. evenings at the lyceum were the happiest, perhaps, in his youthful life. It was an escape for an hour or two from his hard and incessant toil. It was a place where he knew his mother was proud of him, and where even "Uncle Amos" was inclined to be more sparing of his critical suggestions than usual. It was the opening of a new life to the poor boy, and was suggestive of possible achievements which, until then, he had considered wholly beyond his reach. How many of our American statesmen can trace the beginning of their career to the lyceum in the country school-house!/On the popularity of that humble and crude institution, the safety of the nation has often rested.

During his training in those evening schools of debate, he searched the neighborhood and drew upon distant relatives for books and papers. He put his soul into the work; and with an eager longing looked forward to each debate with ever increasing interest.

There was a high ledge of broken rocks in the woods, about a quarter of a mile from his home, where one large shaft of rock rose considerably above its larger neighbors. To the top of that rock James used often to climb, and from its summit deliver to the rocks and trees around his prepared addresses or impromptu harangues. The trees and stones were an audience to him, and in his imagination they listened, sighed, and applauded, as, with excited tones, he approached his peroration. He called that rock his pulpit; and never in the sacred desk or in the halls

of the national councils found he a place in which there seemed to him such necessity for dignity, for grammatical accuracy, or for stirring illustration, as on that forest rostrum among the aged maples Where will the American country youths find another such an audience as they saw in the waving corn, the rows of potatoes, the forest trees, or the astonished herds, in those youthful days when the spirit of oratory first touched their lips with its inspiring fire?