had risen in value, and the declaration of Castlereagh, in the House of Commons, that "the money standard is a sense of value in reference to currency as compared with commodities," and the opinion of another member, who declared that the standard is neither gold nor silver, but something set up in the imagination to be regulated by public opinion."

When we have fully awakened from these vague dreams, public opinion will resume its old channels, and the wisdom and experience of the fathers of our constitution will again be acknowledged and followed.

We shall agree, as our fathers did, that the yardstick shall have length, the pound must have weight and the dollar must have value in itself, and that neither length, nor weight, nor value can be created by the fiat of law. Congress, relieved of the arduous task of regulating and managing all the business of our people, will address itself to the humbler but more important work of preserving the public peace, and managing wisely the revenues and expenditures of the government. Industry will no longer wait for the legislature to discover easy roads to sudden wealth, but will begin again to rely upon labor and frugality, as the only certain road to riches. Prosperity, which has long been waiting, is now ready to come. If we do not rudely repulse her, she will soon revisit our people, and will stay until another periodical craze shall drive her away.

CHAPTER XIX.

SENATOR AND CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. ACTION OF HIS OLD NEIGHBORS. ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE BY THE OHIO LEGISLATURE. HIS SPEECH. VIEWS OF HIS FAMILY. — THEIR NEW HOUSE AT MENTOR. THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. - STRANGE PROPHECIES. THE GREAT PARTISAN CONFLICT. — HIS NOMINATION ON THE THIRTY-SIXTH BALLOT. THE SLANDEROUS CAMPAIGN. — GENERAL GARFIELD'S BEHAVIOR. — TRIUMPHANT ELECTION.

WHILE General Garfield was contending with varying success in the Congressional arena, and experiencing all the daily fluctuations of public opinion with regard to his honesty, wisdom, and strength, the admiration for him in his own State steadily increased, and the love of his old neighbors and friends abated not in the least. His political opponents of every shade in Ohio acknowledged his power and genius, if they did not admit the honesty or wisdom of his political principles. So great was his prominence in Ohio as a statesman, in 1880, that when the vacancy in the senatorial delegation from that State occurred he was looked upon by all parties as the only man who was sure of the seat in case he desired to occupy it.

January 13, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected. him to the United States Senate. It was, however,

one of those political movements which every one felt was to be, and created no unusual excitement for that reason. The kindly relations which existed. between him and his political opponents cannot be better shown than by a quotation from his speech of January 14, 1880, thanking the Ohio Legislature for his election. In that he said:

I recognize the importance of the place to which. you have elected me; and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, that Ohio has had few larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done. in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have never before referred to in public, that many years ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the campaign, on the stump when men are as likely to say unkind things as at any place in the world — a most generous and earnest werd of defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.

But his promotion to the Senate, as honorable and

as desirable a thing as it seemed to be to many people, was regarded by his family in the same light in which they had seen his previous elections and commissions. It was after all a sacrifice. The quiet of home, which his dear old mother and modest wife so much loved, would be again further invaded, and the time of rest and domestic quiet so much desired was placed six years ahead. They had been enabled, partly by the help of friends, to purchase a small farm in Mentor, on the Lake Shore Railroad, but a short ride by railway from Cleveland. It was in a very retired spot and surrounded by small farms. It was rural and secluded. The post-office was half a mile away in a country store, and the railroad station still farther from his farm, and was reached by a rough country road, as circuitous as it was primitive.

It was a locality that seems to have pleased them all, and there, in 1880, the old buildings were replaced by a plain, substantial cottage, contrasting strangely with the piles of graven stone and mansions of brick and wood at Washington. The family occupied the house as soon as it was covered, and lived happily and busily amid the shavings of carpenters, the odor of new paint, and the clangor of hammers. The writer happened to visit them soon after they moved into the new house, and found the General's writing table in the front hall, surrounded by boxes, furniture, papers, letters, books, children, and callers. Yet how happy they all seemed! How changed that