After the Ordeal.--Unanimous Vote of the General Assembly of
Ohio.--Extract from Garfield's Speech of Acceptance.--Purchase
of the Farm at Mentor.--Description of the New House.--Life
at Mentor.--The Garfield Household.--Longing for Home in his
Last Hours.
As gold is tried in the fire, so General Garfield passed through the
distressing ordeal of slander and fierce opposition. In January, 1880,
he was elected by a unanimous vote United States Senator from Ohio. In
his speech of acceptance, he says,--
"I do not undervalue the office that you have tendered to me yesterday
and to-day; but I say, I think, without any mental reservation, that the
manner in which it was tendered to me is far more desirable than the
thing itself. That it has been a voluntary gift of the General Assembly
of Ohio, without solicitation, tendered to me because of their
confidence, is as touching and high a tribute as one man can receive
from his fellow-citizens."
Three years previous to his election as Senator, Garfield was spending
his summer vacation near Cleveland, Ohio. Driving one day along the
stage-road that skirts the shores of Lake Erie, he came to the pretty
town of Mentor.
His old fascination for the sparkling, blue waters returned--he was a
boy again, chopping wood in his uncle's forest and counting the sails
with every stroke! Why not make his summer home just here?
Upon inquiry, he found in Mentor, waiting a purchaser, a fine farm of a
hundred and twenty acres.
The little cottage upon the ground would accommodate his family for
awhile, and when they went back to Washington, a larger and more
convenient house could be built in its place. So the farm was purchased,
and "Lawnfield," the pleasant Mentor home, established.
The new house, built upon the foundation of the old one, suggests
comfort rather than elegance. It is two and a half stories high, with
two dormer windows and a broad veranda in front.
The wide, airy hall contains a large writing table, in addition to the
other furniture, and piles of books and papers greet you in every
corner.
The first floor has a parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen,
wash-room and pantry, planned with every convenience by Mrs. Garfield,
to whom the architect's papers were submitted.
Two of the pleasantest rooms on the second floor are fitted up
especially for "Grandma Garfield;" one of these has a large,
old-fashioned fire-place, and is conceded to be the brightest,
cheeriest room in the whole house.
In the ell is a small room, thirteen and a half by fourteen feet, called
by the children "papa's snuggery." It is not the library, but the walls
are covered with book-shelves, and the little room seems to have been
used by the busy statesman as a sort of "sanctum sanctorum."
The library is a separate building, a few steps to the northeast of the
house. Garfield used to call it his "workshop," and the books of
reference, indices, public documents, etc., piled up on the shelves,
show the numerous tools he employed in his "literary carpentry."
This home at Mentor was purchased especially for the benefit of the
Garfield children, but both father and mother enjoyed the quiet country
life far better than the whirl of society at Washington.
"Isn't it strange," exclaimed Garfield, to one of his guests, "how a man
will revive his early attachment to farm-life? For twenty-five years I
scarcely remained on a farm for a longer period than a few days, but now
I am an enthusiast. I can see now what I could not see when I was a boy.
It is delightful to watch the growing crops."
As Washington turned with delight to the quiet shades of Mount Vernon,
so Garfield looked forward each year to his summer at Mentor.
Oftentimes, his visitors would find him out in the fields, tossing hay
with his boys, superintending the farm-work, or planning some new
improvement.
In a letter to a friend, he says,--
"You can hardly imagine how completely I have turned my mind out of its
usual channels during the last weeks. You know I have never been able to
do anything moderately, and, to-day, I feel myself lame in every muscle
with too much lifting and digging. I shall try to do a little less the
coming week."
It was his custom at Mentor to rise very early in the morning; directly
after breakfast he would mount one of his horses and go all over the
farm, giving directions for the day's work. There were one hundred and
twenty acres in the original farm, but forty more were purchased soon
after. The beautiful lawn, together with the garden and orchard, takes
up about twelve acres. Seventy more are under cultivation, and the
remainder are in pasture lots and woodland. One piece of marshy ground
has been carefully drained, and from it an excellent crop of wheat is
obtained. Many other improvements have been made, as Garfield was an
enthusiast in scientific farming. He liked nothing better than to show
visitors over the place; and, in making the rounds, he would always take
them down the lane back of the house, and up to the top of the ridge
beyond, explaining how the level basin below was once a part of Lake
Erie.
The little town of Mentor is largely settled by New Englanders, and the
hilly surface, the groves of maple, oak, and hickory, interspersed with
thrifty farms, remind one constantly of the Eastern States. Cleveland is
only twenty-five miles to the east, and the waters of Lake Erie form its
northern boundary. To reach Mentor by rail, one must take the Lake Shore
and Michigan Southern Railroad.
A gentleman, who dined one day at Lawnfield, says,--
"I sat next to Mrs. Garfield, and I found her a ready and charming
conversationalist.... She is tall, fine-looking, has a kind, good face,
and the gentlest of manners. A pair of black eyes and a mouth about
which there plays a sweetly-bewitching smile, are the most attractive
features of a thoroughly expressive face. She is a quick observer, and
an intelligent listener."
The two older boys, Harry and James, are fine, manly fellows, eighteen
and sixteen years of age. They are good scholars, and passed an
excellent examination upon their entrance to Williams College in the
fall of '81. Mollie, the only daughter, is a lovely girl of fourteen.
The next child, a boy of ten, bears the name of Irvin McDowell.
"I had," said Garfield, "a personal acquaintance with General McDowell,
and I knew him to be an upright man and a good officer, and consequently
protested slightly to the abuse heaped upon him by giving my son his
name."
The youngest child is seven years of age, and is called Abram, for his
grandfather.
"Grandma Garfield," whose features, as well as those of the children and
their parents, have become so familiar to us, is a bright, active old
lady of eighty years.
"I have seen Garfield," writes Mr. Campbell, the editor of the _Wheeling
Intelligencer_, "in the midst of his plain home life--beneath his
Western Reserve cottage farm-house. His surroundings were those of a man
of culture, but of a man of limited means. His board was frugally
spread--scarcely differing in any respect from the table of his humble
neighbors. He preferred frugality and self-denial to debt, and I came
away, doing honor in my mind to this sterling trait of his character."
Some of the happiest hours of Garfield's life were spent in this modest
home at Mentor, and as one writer beautifully expresses it, through
those long, long summer days, "wounded to death, and looking out on the
yellow dreary Potomac, so dreary, so yellow in the throbbing midsummer
heat, his soul wandered in his dreams, not amid the scenes of his
ambitions or his achievements, but through the haunts of his boyhood,
through the streets of Cleveland, with the comrades of his prime; and
his last dream on earth was a dream of Mentor, the home of his happy and
prosperous manhood. Its modest walls, its harvest fields, its peaceful
glades, were the last pictures to fill his sight with delight before he
lifted his eyes to confront the glory of the Heavenly City."