this world are more tenderly beautiful than such a saddened yet chastened family.

In due time there was built near the Garfield home, that marvelous institution, the country school-house, and James with the rest went to be initiated into its mysteries. It is said of him that he was an uneasy little scholar, pestering the teacher out of her wits, in the effort to keep him still, and compelling her at last to go to his mother with the distressing story that he was doing no good in school. What should she do? And yet she must do something; and so she did what all good mothers do in such cases- she talked to him out of her mother heart, and he went to school the next day resolved to "sit as still as he could."

As soon as able, he became Thomas' helper on the little farm and a producer of the necessaries of life. He was born to work, as he was to poverty.

The nearest neighbor was a family of Boyntons, near relatives, in which were six children, which, with the Garfields, made a merry group. Their work and play, studies and reading, were had together, as much as possible. Of books, they had few, but they were read till they were familiar. The older children in this group formed a "class of critics," to watch each other's use of words and to study the meaning of words and the construction of sentences. James always thought this "class of critics" was of great help to him in giving him the quality of critical observation of language.

When James was about ten years old, Thomas went to Michigan to earn some money in clearing land, and when he returned, brought seventy-five dollars. They were rich now, they thought, and Thomas proposed building a frame house for the family. On this, James worked and took his first lessons in carpentry. After the house was built, he worked among the neighbors on barns and out-buildings, and thus became quite an adept in this business. While at this work, he put up a building for a potash-maker, who was a man of considerable means and business for that vicinity, who, because he could read and write and keep accounts, proposed to give James fourteen dollars a

This looked like

One day while

month to become his clerk and general helper. wealth coming in upon him like an avalanche. here, one of the women of the family spoke to him as a servant, which so incensed him that he left at once. He was no slave, and would not tolerate such insolence.

In his sixteenth summer, he engaged to cut for an uncle, a hundred cords of wood at twenty-five cents a cord, which job he completed in due time. In these muscular, self-denying, and self-sharpening pursuits, James spent his boyhood and youth. The winter school was his opportunity for an education.

During this time, the subject of religion was presented to his young mind, by the Disciple preachers, who were urging their views with great persistency in that region. They discussed the subject of baptism with great positiveness, and their peculiarly literal interpretations of scripture were incisive, dogmatic, zealous and disputatious. They were often at his mother's, and won the confidence of the family. James became a "Disciple," and was thus early led to view life in its religious aspects, and to shape his thoughts, character and daily life under the light of christian teachings.

But the time had come when he must strike out for something definite in life. He had read some of Captain Maryatt's sea stories, and had become enamored of sea life. He mused on it by day and dreamed of it at night. And now that he had become old enough and Lake Erie with its many vessels afforded him a chance, he saw an opportunity, he thought, to make his vision of sea-going life a reality. His mother could not dissuade him from it, and with a heavy heart and many prayers for his safety, she fixed him off. With his bundle on his back and a few dollars in his pocket, she saw him depart on foot for Cleveland, but besought him again as he left her to get employment on land if possible.

He tried many places but found no open door, and then went down among the vessels, to find as he fondly hoped the open way to a life on the rolling deep. But to his modest inquiries he received only coarse and profane rebuffs. Failing here, he concluded to go up to the canal and see if he could find

his cousin, who was captain on a canal boat. He found him and soon made a bargain to drive a team for the "Evening Star." The next morning he was promptly on hand and began his new employment which had a hint of sea life in it. Before the end of the first day he, with his mules, was jerked into the canal. When the captain called out, "Jim, what are you doing there?" he jocosely replied, "Taking a bath." Many stories of his canal-boat life are told of him, all characteristic of his energy, courage, cheerfulness and fidelity.

But not long did this continue, for one rainy midnight he was thrown into the canal where the water was deep, in uncoiling a rope. As he sank in the water with none to help, he saw nothing but drowning before him. But soon the rope which he held fast to tightened in his hand and he began to draw himself toward the boat, hand over hand. In this way he drew himself into the boat, when he found that a kink in the rope had held it for him to draw himself up. He threw the rope out again and again, and many times, to see if it would kink again, but it would not. He began to meditate on his singular deliverWas it providential? He could not comprehend how the rope should so kink, or how it should hold him when so kinked; and he said to himself, that if it was providential and his life was worth such a deliverance, he would go home, educate himself and make the most he could of it.

ance.

This accident, and the meditation it caused, changed the tone and course of his life. The sea-vision vanished. The romance of story life departed; and the counsel of his mother to get an education, came to him with overwhelming force. That was his last trip on the "Evening Star." His next trip was on foot to his mother's door, which he reached late in the evening, to see her through the window, on her knees before the open bible, and to hear her say in prayer: "Oh, turn unto me, and have mercy upon me. Give thy strength to thy servant, and save the son of thy handmaid." He waited but a moment, and opened the door and went in, in answer to her prayer. The feeling with which they embraced each other can be better imagined than expressed. Could they doubt that a kind Provi

dence had kept nim and led him back? All the religious trust and enthusiasm of his nature, which had come to him through generations of his mother's ancestors, now crystalized into a purpose to devote his life to an education and such usefulness as should open to him. No plan was formed; no vision seen; only a "Thy will be done," was prayed in his heart. Thus far his life had been a sort of seeding time-nothing more. Nothing visible had come of it but a large, muscular, active, cheerful youth; nothing invisible had come of it but this one newly formed purpose, and the discipline which his rude, hard-working experience had given him.

And yet this purpose was often shaken for a time. The old desire for the sea would return; the old longing for roving would almost command him to be away. He had a season of struggle to get his feet well on the right road. But he was helped in this by a period of sickness-fever and ague-which he had contracted on the canal, and which came on soon after he got home. It lasted him three months. During this sickness, the old longing for the sea would come on, and he would think that in the spring he would find a place on the lake. Then his mother would tell him of his enfeebled health, and how, if he would go to school at the academy a term, he could teach school the next winter. That winter, a young man by the name of Samuel D. Bates, taught the school near his mother's. He was a student from Chester, and was zealous to take back with him several young men. He won James Garfield to his project.

GARFIELD'S SCHOOL LIFE.

Once at school, young Garfield's feet were planted in the new way. Two young men went with him to the Geauga seminary at Chester, Geauga county, Ohio. It was a Free Will Baptist academy. He at once entered into his studies with zeal. He made it a point to get every lesson well, to be present at every recitation, at every morning session of the school, and at every literary exercise. In the literary society he at once took an active part. Here he wrote his first essays, made his first speeches, was first awakened to the glory of a scholar's life. He became

Books,

an enthusiast in his studies, in academic associations. teachers, students, school, all became objects of delight to him. It was a new world, and he became enrapt in its charmed life.

Here was, a student with him, the daughter of a farmer, Miss Lucretia Rudolph, who afterward became his wife, and stood by him, with his mother, when he was inaugurated president of the United States.

Near the academy was a carpenter's shop where he worked. Saturdays, and some mornings and evenings, to earn money to pay his board and buy his books. In the summer vacations he worked for the farmers at haying and harvesting. In the winters he taught school. He was self-helping and selfeducating all the time, learning how to get and use money, the value of time, economy, plain living, simple dressing and selfrestraint. Hands, heart, conscience and intellect were all being educated together. Young Garfield was at this academy nearly three years.

At Hiram, in the same county, the Disciples had started an institution of a higher grade, called at first the "Eclectic Institute," afterward Hiram college. His family, his neighbors, himself, were "Disciples," and it was natural, right and best that he should go to his own church school. At that stage of his life it was best for him to be with his own. He was in sympathy with them, had a religious and personal interest in their institution, and was not only ambitious for himself, but for his church.

In 1851 he went to Hiram and at once entered with great zeal not only into his studies but into all the interests of that young institution. It developed in him a public spirit, a larger purpose in his study than his own improvement. It was the consecrated door out into the great world, for which he afterward felt such a broad and humane interest. His student life at Hiram had the best possible educational influence on his character. It united religious and moral training with his mental growth, and gave them all a large outlook into the world. It gave him an opportunity to become a free and earnest speaker in religious meetings and on religious topics, so