CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE,

HIS HEALTH. APPEARANCE OF THE HOOSAC VALLEY. THE SCENERY ABOUT WILLIAMS COLLEGE. THE GREAT NATURAL AMPHITHEATRE. THE MOUNTAINS IN OCTOBER. CHARACTER OF THE STUDENTS. GARFIELD'S HABITS AS A STUDENT. - ENTERS THE JUNIOR CLASS. HIS MODESTY. THE FRIENDSHIP OF PRESIDENT HOPKINS AND PROFESSOR CHADBOURNE. HIS TRUTHFULNESS AT COLLEGE. - HIS GRADUATION. HIS CLASS-MATES.

THE three years of study at Hiram had not impaired young Garfield's health, and when, in September, 1854, at twenty-three years of age, he presented himself before the faculty at Williamstown College, for examination, he was a picture of health and strength. His broad shoulders, large face, bright blue eyes, high forehead, and brown hair were visible over the heads of many of his fellow students, and he was at once known among them as the “Ohio giant."

He appears to have been delighted with the professors, with the locality in which the college was situated, and with the extended mountain scenery. In his letters to his friends in Ohio, he was quite enthusiastic in his descriptions of the men and the landscapes. In fact he had been especially favored during his school days in the natural scenery which surrounded academies and college. Williamstown is

situated on the Hoosac river, and among the most majestic of those mountains of which the term “Berkshire Hills" is both belittling and misleading. The college building stands on the top of a natural eminence, overlooking a wide plain, which all around it stretches away to the distant, towering mountains, and reminds the traveler somewhat of the situation of Jerusalem, where the city itself is on a hill, with higher mountains all around looking down upon it. But the great natural amphitheatre, in which the college hill at Williamstown stands, is far more attractive, more extensive, more majestic. The lofty mountains appear to enclose the plain, with no opening apparent anywhere for the egress of the streams whose clear waters unite below the town, to form the Hoosac river. Extensive forests of neverfading green crown the mountains, while woodlands of maple, birch, beach, poplar, and ash, adorn the mountain sides and checker the valley.

In October, and soon after the college term opened, the frost and sunlight combined to beautify the landscape, and nowhere in all the world can a more gorgeous scene be found than from the encircled plains of Williamstown, in the brilliant October days. The distant mountains, under their caps of green, are arrayed in all the varied hues and all the possible combinations and shades which the prism can show. A flowery landscape, as enchanting as the fabled beauty of the ancient vale of Cashmere. No one will obtain any idea of its autumn splendor unless he sees

it for himself, nor believe the accurate descriptions of it until he visits the scene, and for himself

"Sees old Hoosac on his throne,

With hills of beauty gathered round."

It is no overwrought figure which the Alumni of Williams use when they sing:

"Dear Alma Mater, long as stand,
Like pillars of our native land,
These everlasting hills,

Thy grateful children shall proclaim

In every clime thy growing fame."

Aside from its scenery, Williams College possessed various attractions for the young Ohio student, which caused him to select that college as the most desirable place to pursue his studies.

The locality, the design of the founder and incorporators, the conservative character of the president, whose highest aim was to sustain a safe college, the class of students who frequented its halls, the absence of offensive, aristocratic and senseless snobs, and the quiet and honest habits of the little native community, made it a most appropriate and desirable institution for a self-made, country youth, like him. His modesty, his dislike for display, his indisposition to go anywhere or do anything for the name of it, and his desire to work undisturbed by outside attractions, as well as his limited means, combined to make congenial his opening days at Williams College.

He was admitted, without question, to the Junior

class, he having in three years' time, in the work of preparing for college and in the studies of the Freshman and Junior years, accomplished the usual work of six years. The achievement is made more astonishing by the large amount of other labor, physical and mental, which he performed during that period, in order to secure his board, clothing and tuition.

He became at once a favorite of President Hopkins, and a close friend of Professor Chadbourne, who had been elected a professor one year before. It was a strong recommendation for young Garfield to have the esteem and love of two such remarkable men. Yet both those gifted scholars have kept him fresh in their memories, and both have watched his career with unabated interest. It was among such men that he made his closest friendship. Only thoughtful, studious, and earnest men would have seen anything attractive in him. His class-mates testify that his life was so retiring and his behavior so unostentatious, that he made no especial impression on their memories. He studied hard, often walked alone in the roads or fields, and attended to all his duties with quiet promptness. It was understood that he was to enter the ministry, and in his entire stay they saw nothing inconsistent with that profession. He took an especial interest in metaphysical studies, rhetoric, and debate, and was a leading mind among his class-mates on those topics.

During his collegiate course he tried to secure small sums of money by teaching evening writing

school, in the small towns around Williamstown, but was never so successful, in that scattered community, as to secure a very profitable number of scholars. He dressed very plainly and cheaply, and was compelled to economize, in every way,-in his board, his books, and in his traveling expenses, in order to make the small sum he had secured to last until his graduation. He was the humblest of them all. He was very poor, and was brave enough to frankly acknowledge it. There is no more striking proof of the fact, so little understood, that college life is but a small part of the discipline and learning necessary to a liberal education than is found in the history of college classes. How often do we find that the honored, brilliant, and influential students sink almost immediately out of sight when they leave the college halls and enter the breakers of actual life; while the silent, thoughtful one, whose presence in the class is scarcely remembered, comes conspicuously to the surface, in civil or military life, and soon towers above all his acquaintances and school-day associates. Sometimes, in the annals of scientific discovery, or of national leadership, the popular and brilliant college student is found. Once in a while the valedictorian is again heard of in the vanguard of civilization, with the great and the good. But the rarity of it is a curious and sad feature connected with students' lives. It may be that the honors they received led them to the fatal conclusion that at their graduation they knew all that men need to learn, and stopping, they were soon left behind and beneath