I cannot, within the limits assigned to _The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and Letters

of special preparation which fitted the young giant for the great and

various parts he was to play in the drama of our republican life. It

would be but to repeat a story whose pathos and romance are all known by

heart to his countrymen. The childhood in the cabin; the struggle with

want almost with famine, the brother proudly bringing his first dollar

to buy shoes for the little bare feet; the labor in the forest, the

growth of the strong frame and the massive brain; the reading of the

first novel; the boy's longing for the sea; the canal-boat; the

carpenter's shop; the first school; the eager thirst for knowledge; the

learning that an obstacle seems only a thing to be overcome; the

founding of the college at Hiram; the companionship in study of the

gifted lady whose eulogy he pronounced; the Campbellite preaching; the

ever-wise guidance of the mother; the marriage to the bright and

beautiful schoolmate; we know them better even, than we know the youth

of Washington and of Webster. General Garfield said in 1878, that he had

not long ago conversed with an English gentleman, who told him that in

twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural class in England

he had never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm

laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen. The

story of a childhood passed in poverty, of intellect and moral nature

trained in strenuous contests with adversity, is not unfamiliar to those

who have read the lives of the men who have been successful in this

country in any of the walks of life. It is one of the most beneficent

results of American institutions that we have ceased to speak of poverty

and hardship, and the necessity for hard and humble toil as

disadvantages to a spirit endowed by nature with the capacity for

generous ambitions. In a society where labor is honorable, and where

every place in social or public life is open to merit, early poverty is

no more a disadvantage than a gymnasium to an athlete, or drill and

discipline to a soldier.

General Garfield was never ashamed of his origin. He

"Did not change, but kept in lofty place

The wisdom which adversity had bred."

The humblest friend of his boyhood was ever welcome to him when he sat

in the highest seats, where Honor was sitting by his side. The poorest

laborer was sure of the sympathy of one who had known all the bitterness

of want and the sweetness of bread earned by the sweat of the brow. He

was ever the simple, plain, modest gentleman. When he met a common

soldier it was not the general or military hero that met him, but the

comrade. When he met the scholar, it was not the learned man, or the

college president, but the learner. It was fitting that he who found

open the road through every gradation of public honor, from the log

cabin to the Presidency, simply at the price of deserving it, should

have answered in the same speech the sophistries of communism and the

sinister forebodings of Lord Macaulay. "Here," he said, "society is not

fixed in horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great

New England man said years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad,

deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that

mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom, may ride through all the

waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest

waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light of

American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however

humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true

heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of society,

and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State. Here there is

no need for the Old World war between capital and labor. Here is no need

of the explosion of social order predicted by Macaulay."

When seeking a place of education in the East, young Garfield wrote to

several New England colleges. The youth's heart was touched, and his

choice decided by the tone of welcome in the reply of Dr. Hopkins, the

president of Williams. It was fortunate that his vigorous youth found

itself under the influence of a very great but very simple and sincere

character. The secret of Dr. Hopkins' power over his pupils lay, first,

in his own example, profound scholarship, great practical wisdom,

perfect openness and sincerity, and humility, second, in a careful study

of the disposition of each individual youth, third, justice, absolute,

yet accompanied by sympathy and respect, seldom severity, never scorn,

in dealing with the errors of boyhood. No harsh and inflexible law, cold

and pitiless as a winter's sea, dealt alike with the sluggish and the

generous nature. No storm of merciless ridicule greeted the shy,

awkward, ungainly, backwoodsman. And, beyond all, Dr. Hopkins taught his

pupils that lesson in which some of our colleges so sadly

fail--reverence for the republican life of which they were to form a

part, and for the great history of whose glory they were inheritors. It

was my fortune, on an evening last spring, to see the illustrious pupil,

I suppose for the last time on earth, take leave of the aged teacher

whose head the frosts of nearly fourscore winters had touched so

lightly, and to hear him say at parting, "I have felt your presence at

the beginning of my administration like a benediction." The President

delighted in his college. He kept unbroken the friendships he formed

within her walls. He declared that the place and its associations were

to him a fountain of perpetual youth. He never forgot his debt to her.

When he was stricken down he was on his way, all a boy again, to lay his

untarnished laurels at her feet.

It would have been hard to find in this country a man so well equipped

by nature, by experience, and by training, as was Garfield when he

entered the Ohio Senate, in 1860, at the age of twenty-eight. He was in

his own person the representative of the plainest life of the backwoods

and the best culture of the oldest eastern community. He had been used

in his youth to various forms of manual labor. The years which he

devoted to his profession of teacher and of college president, were

years of great industry, in which he disciplined his powers of public

speaking and original investigation. Dr. Hopkins said of him: "There was

a large general capacity applicable to any subject and sound sense. What

he did was done with facility, but by honest and avowed work. There was

no pretence of genius or alternation of spasmodic effort and of rest,

but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions of what was

undertaken." His sound brain and athletic frame could bear great labor

without fatigue. He had a thoroughly healthy and robust intellect,

capable of being directed upon any of the pursuits of life or any of the

affairs of State in any department of the public service. We have no

other example in our public life of such marvellous completeness of

intellectual development. He exhibited enough of his varied mental

capacity to make it sure that he could have attained greatness as a

metaphysician or a mathematician in any of the exact sciences, as a

linguist, as an executive officer, as he did in fact attain it as a

military commander, as an orator, as a debater and a parliamentary and

popular leader.

The gigantic scale on which the operations of our late war were

conducted, has dwarfed somewhat the achievements of individual actors.

If in the history of either of the other wars in which our people have

engaged, whether before or after the Declaration of Independence, such a

chapter should be found as the narrative of Garfield's Kentucky

campaign, it would alone have made the name of its leader immortal. It

is said that General Rosecrans received the young schoolmaster with some

prejudice. "When he came to my headquarters," he says, "I must confess

that I had a prejudice against him, as I understood he was a preacher

who had gone into politics, and a man of that cast I was naturally

opposed to." In his official report Rosecrans says:--

"I especially mention Brigadier-General Garfield, ever

active, prudent and sagacious. I feel much indebted to him

for both counsel and assistance in the administration of

this army. He possesses the energy and the instinct of a

great commander."

We must leave to soldiers and to military historians to assign then

relative historic importance to the movements of the war. But we may

safely trust the popular judgment which pronounces Garfield's role at

Chickamauga one of the most conspicuous instances of personal heroism,

and the Kentucky campaign a most brilliant example of fertility of

resource, combined audacity and prudence, sound military judgment, and

success against great odds. We may safely trust, too, the judgment of

the accomplished historian, who pronounces his report in favor of the

advance that ended with the battle of Chickamuauga "the ablest military

document submitted by a chief of staff to his superior during the war."

We may accept, also, the award of Lincoln, who made him major-general

for his brilliant service at Chickamauga, and the confidence of Thomas,

who offered him the command of an army corps. Great as was his capacity

for military service, the judgment of Abraham Lincoln did not err, when

it summoned him to the field of labor where his greatest laurels were

won. It is the fashion, in some quarters, to lament the decay of

statesmanship, and to make comparisons, by no means complimentary,

between persons now entrusted with the conduct of public affairs, and

their predecessors. We may at least find consolation in the knowledge

that when any of our companions die they do not fail to receive full

justice from the hearts of the people.

Suppose any of the statesmen who preceded the war, or some intelligent

and not unfriendly foreign observer--some De Tocqueville or Macaulay--to

look forward with Garfield to the duties which confronted him when he

entered Congress in 1863. With what despair, in the light of all past

experience, would he have contemplated the future. How insignificant the

difficulties which beset the men of the preceding seventy years compared

with those which have crowded the seventeen which were to follow. How

marvellous the success the American people have achieved in dealing with

these difficulties compared with that which attended the statesmanship

of the times of Webster and Clay and Calhoun, giants as they were. The

greatness of these men is not likely to be under-valued anywhere, least

of all in Massachusetts. They contributed each in his own way those

masterly discussions of the great principles by which the Constitution

must be interpreted, and the economic laws on which material prosperity

depends, which will abide as perpetual forces so long as the republic

shall endure. Mr Webster, especially, aided in establishing in the

jurisprudence of the country the great judgments, which, on the one

hand, asserted for the national government its most necessary and

beneficent powers, and, on the other hand, have protected property and

liberty from invasion. He uttered in the Senate the immortal argument

which convinced the American people of the unity of the republic and the

supremacy and indestructibility of the national authority. It has been

well said that the cannon of the nation were shotted with the reply to

Hayne. But the only important and permanent measure with which the name

of Webster is connected is the Ashburton treaty--an achievement of

diplomacy of little consequence in comparison with those which obtained

from the great powers of Europe the relinquishment of the doctrine of

perpetual allegiance, or with the Alabama treaty of 1871. Mr. Clay's

life was identified with two great policies--the protection of American

industry and the compromise between slavery and freedom in their strife

for control of the Territories. When he died the free-trade tariff of

1844 was the law of the land, and within two years the Missouri

compromise was repealed. Mr Calhoun has left behind him the memory of a

stainless life, great intellectual power and a lost cause.

To each generation is committed its peculiar task. To these men it was

given to wake the infant republic to a sense of its own great destiny,

and to teach it the laws of its being, by which it must live or bear no

life. To the men of our time the abstract theories, which were only

debated in other days, have come as practical realities, demanding

prompt and final decision on questions where error is fatal. From the

time of Jay's treaty no such problem has presented itself to American

diplomacy as that which the war left as its legacy. The strongest power

on earth, accustomed, in dealing with other nations, to take counsel

only of her pride and her strength, had inflicted on us vast injury, of

which the honor of this country seemed pledged to insist on reparation,

which England conceived hers equally pledged to deny. But in domestic

affairs, the difficulties were even greater. For six of the sixteen

years that followed the death of Lincoln, the President was not in

political accord with either house of Congress. For four others the

house was of different politics from President and Senate. During the

whole time the dominant party had to encounter a zealous and able

opposition, and to submit its measures to a people having apparently the

strongest inducements to go wrong. The rights of capital were to be

determined by the votes of labor, debtors to fix the value of their

payments to their creditors, a people under no constraint but their own

sense of duty to determine whether they would continue to bear the

weight of a vast debt, the policy of dealing with the conquered to be

decided at the close of a long war by the votes of the conquerors, among

whom every other family was in mourning for its dead, finance and

currency with their subtleties, surpassing the subtleties of

metaphysics to be made clear to the apprehension of plain men; business

to be recalled from the dizzy and dangerous heights of speculation to

moderate gains and safe laws; great public ways connecting distant

oceans to be built; commerce to be diverted into unaccustomed channels;

the mouth of the Mississippi to be opened; a great banking system to be

devised and put in operation, such as was never known before, alike

comprehensive and safe, through whose veins and arteries credit, the

life-blood of trade should ebb and flow in the remotest extremities of

the land; four millions of people to be raised from slavery to

citizenship; millions more to be welcomed from foreign lands; a disputed

presidential succession to be settled, after an election contest in

which the country seemed turned into two hostile camps, by a tribunal

for which the founders of the government had made no provision; all this

to be accomplished under the restraints of a written Constitution.

When this list has been enumerated the eulogy of Garfield the statesman

has been spoken. There is scarcely one of these questions, certainly not

more than one or two, which he did not anticipate, carefully and

thoroughly study for himself before it arose, and to which he did not

contribute an original argument, unsurpassed in persuasive force.

Undoubtedly there were others who had more to do with marshalling the

political forces of the house. But almost from the time he entered it he

was the leader of its best thought. He was ever serious, grave,

addressing himself only to the reason and conscience of his auditors.

He lived in a State whose people were evenly divided in politics, and on

whose decision, as it swayed alternately from side to side, the fate of

the country often seemed to depend. You will search his speeches in vain

for an appeal to a base motive or an evil passion. Many men who are

called great political leaders are really nothing but great political

followers. They study the currents of a public sentiment which other men

form. They use as instruments opinions which they never espoused till

they became popular. General Garfield always consulted with great care

the temper of the house in the conduct of measures which were under his

charge. But he was remarkably independent in forming his judgments, and

inflexible in adhering to them on all great essential questions. His

great friend and commander, General Thomas, whose stubborn courage saved

the day in the great battle for the possession of Tennessee, was

well-called the "rock of Chickamauga." In the greater battle in 1876 for

the nation's honor, Garfield well deserved to be called the "rock of

Ohio." Everything he did and said manifested the serious, reverent love

of excellent. He had occasion often to seek to win to his opinions

masses of men composed largely of illiterate persons. No man ever heard

from his lips a sneer at scholarship. At the same time, he never made

the scholar's mistake of undervaluing the greatness of the history of

his own country, or the quality of his own people.

The limits of this discourse do not permit me to enter into the detail

of the variety and extent of his service in debate, in legislation, and

in discussions before the people. I could detain you until midnight were

I to recount from my own memory the great labors of the twelve years

that it was my privilege to share with him in the public service, for

four of which I sat almost by his side. Everybody who had a new thought

brought it to him for hospitable welcome. Did science or scholarship

need anything of the government, Garfield was the man to whom they came.

While charged with the duty of supervising the details of present

legislation he was always foreseeing and preparing for the future. In

the closing years of the war, while chairman of the committee of

military affairs, he was studying finance. Later he had prepared himself

to deal with the defects in the civil service. I do not think the

legislation of the next twenty years will more than reach the ground

which he had already occupied in his advanced thought.

General Garfield gave evidence of vast powers of oratory on some very

memorable occasions. But he made almost no use of them as a means of

persuading the people to conclusions where great public interests were

at stake. Sincerity, directness, full and perfect understanding of his

subject, clear logic, manly dignity, simple and apt illustration, marked

all his discourse. But on a few great occasions, such as that in New

York, when the people were moved almost to frenzy by the assassination

of Lincoln, or in the storm which moved the great human ocean at the

convention at Chicago, he showed that he could touch with a master's

hands the chords of that mighty instrument--

"Such as raised

To height of noblest temper heroes old,

Arming to battle, and instead of rage

Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved

With dread of death to flight or foul retreat;

Nor wanting power to mitigate and suage

With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase

Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain

From mortal or immortal minds."

When General Garfield took the oath of office as President, he seemed to

those who knew him best, though in his fiftieth year, still in the prime

of a splendid and vigorous youth. He was still growing. We hoped for him

eight years of brilliant administration, and then, in some form or place

of service, an old age like that of Adams, whom, in variety of

equipment, alone of our Presidents he resembled. What was best and

purest and loftiest in the aspiration of America seemed at last to have

laid its hand on the helm. Under its beneficent rule we hoped, as our

country entered on its new career of peace and prosperity, a nobler

liberty, a better friendship, a purer justice, a more lasting

brotherhood. But he was called to a sublimer destiny. He had ascended

along and up the heights of service, of success, of greatness, of glory;

ever raised by the people to higher ranks for gallant and meritorious

conduct on each field, until by their suffrages he stood foremost among

men of the foremost among nations. But in the days of his sickness and

death he became the perpetual witness and example how much greater than

the achievements of legislative halls, or the deeds of the field of

battle, are the household virtues and simple family affections which all

men have within their reach; how much greater than the lessons of the

college or the camp, or the congress, are the lessons learned at

mother's knees. The honors paid to Garfield are the protest of a better

age and a better generation against the vulgar heroisms of the past. Go

through their mausoleums and under their triumphal arches, and see how

the names inscribed there shrink and shrivel compared with that of this

Christian soldier, whose chiefest virtues, after all, are of the

fireside and the family circle, and of the dying bed. Here the hero of

America becomes the hero of humanity.

We are justified, then, in saying of this man that he has been tried and

tested in every mode by which the quality of a human heart and the

capacity of a human intellect can be disclosed; by adversity, by

prosperity, by poverty, by wealth, by leadership in deliberative

assemblies, and in the perilous edge of battle, by the height of power

and of fame. The essay was to be completed by the certain and visible

approach of death. As he comes out into the sunlight, more and more

clearly does his country behold a greatness and symmetry which she is to

see in their true and full proportions only when he lies in the repose

of death.

"As sometimes in a dead man's face,

To those that watch it more and more,

A likeness, hardly seen before,

Comes out, to some one of his race,

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,

I see thee what thou art, and know

Thy likeness to the wise below,

Thy kindred with the great of old."

Let us not boast at the funeral of our dead. Such a temper would be

doubly odious in the presence of such expressions of hearty sympathy

from governments of every form. But we should be unfaithful to ourselves

if in asking for this man a place in the world's gallery of illustrious

names we did not declare that we offer him as an example of the

products of Freedom. With steady and even step he walked from the

log-cabin and the canal-path to the school, to the college, to the

battle-field, to the halls of legislation, to the White House, to the

chamber of death. The ear in which the voices of his countrymen, hailing

him at the pinnacle of human glory had scarcely died out, heard the

voice of the dread archangel, and his countenance did not change. Is not

that country worth dying for whose peasantry are of such a strain? Is

not the Constitution worth standing by under whose forms Freedom calls

such men to her high places? Is not the Union worth saving which gives

all of us the property of countrymen in such a fame?

IV.

HON. JAMES G. BLAINE'S EULOGY.

MR. PRESIDENT: For the second time in this generation the great

departments of the Government of the United States are assembled in the

Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered

President. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in which the

passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his

great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horrors

which had marked so many lintels with the blood of the first born.

Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when brother had been reconciled

to brother, and when anger and hate had been banished from the land.

"Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it

as it has been exhibited where such example was last to have been looked

for, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by

revenge, the face black with settled hate. Let him draw, rather, a

decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; not so much an example of

human nature in its depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an

infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his

character."

* * * * *

From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising against

Charles First, about twenty thousand emigrants came from Old England to

New England. As they came in pursuit of intellectual freedom and

ecclesiastical independence rather than for worldly honor and profit,

the emigration naturally ceased when the contest for religious liberty

began in earnest at home. The man who struck his most effective blow for

freedom of conscience by sailing for the colonies in 1620 would have

been accounted a deserter to leave after 1640. The opportunity had then

come on the soil of England for that great contest which established the

authority of Parliament, gave religious freedom to the people, sent

Charles to the block, and committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the

Supreme Executive authority of England. The English emigration was never

renewed, and from these twenty thousand men with a small emigration from

Scotland and from France are descended the vast numbers who have New

England blood in their veins.

In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to

other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the

most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects--merchants of

capital, skilled manufacturers and handicraftsmen, superior at the time

to all others in Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French

came to America, a few landed in New England and became honorably

prominent in its history. Their names have in large part become

anglicized, or have disappeared, but their blood is traceable in many of

the most reputable families, and their fame is perpetuated in honorable

memorials and useful institutions.

From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot,

came the late President--his father, Abram Garfield, being descended

from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other.

It was good stock on both sides--none better, none braver, none truer.

There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, of imperishable

love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud

of his blood, and, with as much satisfaction as if he were a British

nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in Burke's Peerage, he

spoke of himself as ninth in descent from those who would not endure the

oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave French

Protestants who refused to submit to tyranny even from the Grand

Monarque.

General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and, during his

only visit to England, he busied himself in discovering every trace of

his forefathers in parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting

with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons one night after a

long day's labor in this field of research, he said with evident elation

that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of English blood

had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and human liberty,

his family had been represented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby,

and at Preston, they were at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga and at Monmouth,

and in his own person had battled for the same great cause in the war

which preserved the Union of the States.

Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of

Garfield was one of privation, but its poverty has been made

indelicately and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined

him as the ragged, starving child, whose reality too often greets the

eye in the squalid sections of our large cities. General Garfield's

infancy and youth had none of their destitution, none of their pitiful

features appealing to the tender heart and to the open hand of charity.

He was a poor boy in the same sense in which Henry Clay was a poor boy;

in which Andrew Jackson was a poor boy; in which Daniel Webster was a

poor boy: in the sense in which a large majority of the eminent men of

America in all generations, have been poor boys. Before a great

multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr Webster bore this testimony;

"It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder

brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snowdrifts

of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose first

from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there was no

similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the

settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to

it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the

hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love

to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early

affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with

all I know of this primitive family abode."

With the requisite change of scene, the same words would aptly portray

the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are

engaged in a common struggle, and where a common sympathy and hearty

co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a very different poverty;

different in kind, different in influence and effect, from that

conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day forced to

contrast itself with neighboring wealth, on which it feels a sense of

grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty.

It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities

of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the

agricultural regions of the West, where a house-raising, or even a

corn-husking, is matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any

other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. This

honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield, as it marks the

youth of millions of the best blood and brain now training for the

future citizenship and future government of the republic. Garfield was

born heir to land, to the title of free-holder, which has been the

patent and passport of self-respect with the Anglo Saxon race ever since

Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His adventure on the

canal--an alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie

schooner--was a farmer boy's device for earning money, just as the New

England lad begins a possibly greater career by sailing before the mast

on a coasting vessel or on a merchantman bound to the farther India or

to the China Seas.

No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early struggles

with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when

he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble

mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position,

as having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having

suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the hand of

charity. General Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family

love and family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no privations

which he did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those

which were recalled with delight, and transmitted with profit and with

pride.

Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were extremely

limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to

learn. He could read at three years of age, and each winter he had the

advantage of the district school. He read all the books to be found

within the circle of his acquaintance; some of them he got by heart.

While yet in childhood he was a constant student of the Bible, and

became familiar with its literature. The dignity and earnestness of his

speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this early training. At

eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, and thenceforward his

ambition was to obtain a college education. To this end he bent all his

efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter's bench, and, in

the winter season, teaching the common schools of the neighborhood.

While thus laboriously occupied he found time to prosecute his studies,

and was so successful that at twenty-two years of age he was able to

enter the junior class at Williams College, then under the presidency of

the venerable and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his

powers, survives the eminent pupil to whom he was of inestimable

service.

The history of Garfield's life to this period, presents no novel

features. He had undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reliance,

self-sacrifice, and ambition, qualities, which, be it said for the honor

of our country, are everywhere to be found among the young men of

America. But from his graduation at Williams onward, to the hour of his

tragical death, Garfield's career was eminent and exceptional. Slowly

working through his educational period, receiving his diploma when

twenty-four years of age, he seemed as one bound to spring into

conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he was successively

president of a college, State Senator of Ohio, major-general of the army

of the United States, and Representative elect to the National Congress.

A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief

and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history

of the country.

Garfield's army life was begun with no other military knowledge than

such as he had hastily gained from books in the few months preceding his

march to the field. Stepping from civil life to the head of a regiment,

the first order he received when ready to cross the Ohio was to assume

command of a brigade, and to operate as an independent force in Eastern

Kentucky. His immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey

Marshall, who was marching down the Big Sandy with the intention of

occupying, in connection with other confederate forces, the entire

territory of Kentucky, and of precipitating the State into secession.

This was at the close of the year 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young

college professor been thrown into a more embarrassing and discouraging

position. He knew just enough of military science, as he expressed it

himself, to measure the extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of

men he was marching, in rough winter weather, into a strange country,

among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior force under

the command of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had seen

active and important service in two preceding wars.

The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, the

endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage he

imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself, the measures he adopted

to increase his force and to create in the enemy's mind exaggerated

estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall,

the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his force, and the

emancipation of an important territory from the control of the

rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of disasters to the

Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous importance,

and in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to the rank of

a military hero. With less than two thousand men in his entire command,

with a mobilized force of only eleven hundred, without cannon, he had

met an army of five thousand and defeated them--driving Marshall's

forces successively from two strongholds of their own selection,

fortified with abundant artillery. Major-General Buell, commanding the

Department of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier of the regular

army, published an order of thanks and congratulation on the brilliant

result of the Big Sandy campaign, which would have turned the head of a

less cool and sensible man than Garfield. Buell declared that his

services had called into action the highest qualities of a soldier, and

President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the more

substantial reward of a brigadier-general's commission, to bear date

from the day of his decisive victory over Marshall.

The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its brilliant

beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the command of a

brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the second and

decisive day's fight in the great battle of Shiloh. The remainder of the

year 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, as it was not to the

armies with which he was serving. His practical sense was called into

exercise in completing the task assigned him by General Buell, of

reconstructing bridges and reestablishing lines of railway communication

for the army. His occupation in this useful but not brilliant field was

varied by service on courts-martial of importance, in which department

of duty he won a valuable reputation attracting the notice and securing

the approval of the able and eminent Judge Advocate General of the Army.

That of itself was warrant to honorable fame; for among the great men

who in those trying days gave themselves, with entire devotion, to the

service of their country, one who brought to that service the ripest

learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments, who

labored with modesty and shunned applause, who, in the day of triumph,

sat reserved and silent and grateful--as Francis Deak in the hour of

Hungary's deliverance--was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, who, in his

honorable retirement, enjoys the respect and veneration of all who love

the Union of the States.

Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly important and

responsible post of chief of staff to General Rosecrans, then at the

head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military

campaign no subordinate officer requires sounder judgment and quicker

knowledge of men than the chief of staff to the commanding general. An

indiscreet man in such a position can sow more discord, breed more

jealousy, and disseminate more strife, than any other officer in the

entire organization. When General Garfield assumed his new duties, he

found various troubles already well developed and seriously effecting

the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. The energy, the

impartiality, and the tact with which he sought to allay these

dissensions, and to discharge the duties of his new and trying position,

will always remain one of the most striking proofs of his great

versatility. His military duties closed on the memorable field of

Chickamauga, a field which, however disastrous to the Union arms, gave

to him the occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The very rare

distinction was accorded him of a great promotion for his bravery on a

field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him a major-general in

the army of the United States for gallant and meritorious conduct in the

battle of Chickamauga.

The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized under the command of General

Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its divisions. He was

extremely desirous to accept the position, but was embarrassed by the

fact that he had, a year before, been elected to Congress, and the time

when he must take his seat was drawing near. He preferred to remain in

the military service, and had within his own breast the largest

confidence of success in the wider field which his new rank opened to

him. Balancing the argument on the one side and the other, anxious to

determine what was for the best, desirous above all things to do his

patriotic duty, he was decisively influenced by the advice of President

Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, both of whom assured him that he could,

at that time, be of especial value in the House of Representatives. He

resigned his commission of major-general on the fifth day of December,

1863, and took his seat in the House of Representatives on the seventh.

He had served two years and four months in the army, and had just

completed his thirty-second year.

The Thirty-eighth Congress is preeminently entitled in history to the

designation of the War Congress. It was elected while the war was

flagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved in the

continuance of the struggle. The Thirty seventh Congress had, indeed,

legislated to a large extent on war measures, but it was chosen before

any one believed that secession of the States would be actually

attempted. The magnitude of the work which fell upon its successor was

unprecedented, both in respect to the vast sums of money raised for the

support of the army and navy, and of the new and extraordinary powers of

legislation which it was forced to exercise. Only twenty-four States

were represented, and one hundred and eighty-two members were upon its

roll. Among these were many distinguished party leaders on both sides,

veterans in the public service, with established reputations for

ability, and with that skill which comes only from parliamentary

experience. Into this assemblage of men Garfield entered without special

preparation, and it might almost be said unexpectedly. The question of

taking command of a division of troops under General Thomas or taking

his seat in Congress, was kept open till the last moment, so late,

indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his

appearance in the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore the uniform

of a major-general of the United States army on Saturday, and on Monday

in civilian's dress he answered to the roll-call as a Representative in

Congress from the State of Ohio.

He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected him.

Descended almost entirely from New England stock, the men of the

Ashtabula district were intensely radical on all questions relating to

human rights. Well-educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in affairs,

acutely discerning of character, not quick to bestow confidence, and

slow to withdraw it, they were at once the most helpful and most

exacting of supporters. Their tenacious trust in men in whom they have

once confided, is illustrated by the unparalleled fact that Elisha

Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings and James A. Garfield represented the

district for fifty-four years.

There is no test of a man's ability in any department of public life

more severe than service in the House of Representatives; there is no

place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously

acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little

consideration is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginners.

What a man gains in the House, he gains by sheer force of his own

character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy, and

will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the

strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive and

no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is

impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed.

With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in

the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his college

graduation. But he had not been in his seat sixty days before his

ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front

with the confidence of one who belonged there. The House was crowded

with strong men of both parties; nineteen of them have since been

transferred to the Senate, and many of them have served with distinction

in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, and on foreign

missions of great consequence; but among them all none grew so rapidly,

none so firmly as Garfield. As is said by Trevelyan of his parliamentary

hero, Garfield succeeded "because all the world in concert could not

have kept him in the background, and because when once in the front he

played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease that

were but the outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy, on

which it was his power to draw." Indeed the apparently reserved force

which Garfield possessed, was one of his great characteristics. He never

did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better. He

never expended so much strength but that he seemed to be holding

additional power to call. This is one of the happiest and rarest

distinctions of an effective debater, and often counts for as much in

persuading an assembly as the eloquent and elaborate argument.

The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled by his service in the

House of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by honorable

performance, and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely

terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might

have done in a field where the great prizes are so few, cannot be

profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a soldier he did his duty

bravely; he did it intelligently; he won an enviable fame, and he

retired from the service without blot or breath against him. As a

lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can scarcely be

said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts he made at the bar

were distinguished by the same high order of talent which he exhibited

on every field where he was put to the test, and if a man may be

accepted as a competent judge of his own capacity and adaptations, the

law was the profession to which Garfield should have devoted himself.

But fate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest

largely upon his service in the House of Representatives. That service

was exceptionally long. He was nine times consecutively chosen to the

House, an honor enjoyed by not more than six other Representatives of

the more than five thousand who have been elected from the organization

of the government until this hour.

As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined,

where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield

must be assigned a very high rank. More, perhaps, than any man with

whom he was associated in public life, he gave careful and systematic

study to public questions, and he came to every discussion in which he

took part, with elaborate and complete preparation. He was a steady and

indefatigable worker. Those who imagine that talent or genius can supply

the place or achieve the results of labor, can find no encouragement in

Garfield's life. In preliminary work he was apt, rapid, and skillful. He

possessed in a high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas and

facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, had the art of getting from a book all

that was of value in it, by a reading apparently so quick and cursory

that it seemed like a mere glance at the table of contents. He was a

preeminently fair and candid man in debate, took no petty advantages,

stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusions, rarely

appealed to prejudice, did not seek to inflame passion. He had a quicker

eye for the strong point of his adversary than for his weak point, and

on his own side he so marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his

hearers forget any possible lack in the complete strength of his

position. He had a habit of stating his opponent's side with such

amplitude of fairness and such liberality of concession that his

followers often complained that he was giving his case away. But never

in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the House did he

give his case away or fail, in the judgment of competent and impartial

listeners, to gain the mastery.

These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater, did

not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parliamentary

leader, as that term is understood wherever free representative

government exists, is necessarily and very strictly the organ of his

party. An ardent American defined the instinctive warmth of patriotism

when he offered the toast, "Our country, always right, but right or

wrong, our country." The parliamentary leader who has a body of

followers that will do and dare and die for the cause, is one who

believes his party always right, but right or wrong, is for his party.

No more important or exacting duty devolves upon him than the selection

of the field and the time for contest. He must know not merely how to

strike, but where to strike and when to strike. He often skillfully

avoids the strength of his opponent's position and scatters confusion in

his ranks by attacking an exposed point when really the righteousness of

the cause and the strength of logical intrenchment are against him. He

conquers often both against the right and the heavy battalions; as when

young Charles Fox, in the days of his toryism, carried the House of

Commons against justice, against its immemorial rights, against his own

convictions, if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions, and, in

the interest of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical

sovereign, drove Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex

had chosen him, and installed Luttrell, in defiance, not merely of law

but of public decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was

disqualified--disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty of

his heart, by his conscience, and by every instinct and aspiration of

his nature.

The three most destinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in

this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglass, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. Each

was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense

personality, differing widely, each from the others, and yet with a

signal trait in common--the power to command. In the give and take of

daily discussion, in the art of controling and consolidating reluctant

and refractory followers; in the skill to overcome all forms of

opposition, and to meet, with competency and courage the varying phases

of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult

to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional history. But

of those Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to

find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in

1841, when, at sixty-four years of age, he took the control of the Whig

party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the

power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the

Senate, against the Herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise

in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plentitude of

power, he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that

conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his

administration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes.

Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when, in 1854,

against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise

counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even

the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Congress into a

repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens in his contests

from 1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership into

Congress, tied the hands of the President, and governed the country by

its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the

Executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at the

opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the

Cabinet and the moral power of Chase on the Bench, Andrew Johnson could

not command the support of one-third in either House against the

parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating

spirit and the unquestioned leader.

From these three great men Garfield differed radically; differed in the

quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of ambition.

He could not do what they did, but he could do what they could not, and

in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will longer

exert a potential influence among men, and which, measured by the severe

test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more enduring and more

enviable fame.

Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ignorant of the details

of his work, may, in some degree, measure them by the annals of

Congress. No one of the generation of public men to which he belonged

has contributed so much that will be valuable for future reference. His

speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied,

carefully phrased, and exhaustive of the subject under consideration.

Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of

_Congressional Record_, they would present an invaluable compendium of

the political history of the most important era through which the

national government has ever passed. When the history of this period

shall be impartially written, when war legislation, measures of

reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to the

Constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie

resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed, unsurrounded by

prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield

will be estimated at their true value, and will be found to comprise a

vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis and sound

conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority were accessible, his speeches

in the House of Representatives from December, 1863, to June, 1880,

would give a well-connected history and complete defence of the

important legislation of the seventeen eventful years that constitute

his parliamentary life. Far beyond that, his speeches would be found to

forecast many great measures yet to be completed--measures which he knew

were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently

believed would secure popular approval within the period of his own

lifetime, and by the aid of his own efforts.

Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary leaders,

it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of

American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in

his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the

love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation to which

John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his Presidency. He had some of

those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and

which, indeed, in all our public life, have left the great

Massachusetts senator without an intellectual peer.

In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the

House of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield.

But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong,

independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are

discernible in that most promising of modern conservatives, who died two

early for his country and his fame, the Lord George Bentick. He had all

of Burke's love for the sublime and the beautiful, with, possibly,

something of his superabundance; and in his faith and his magnanimity,

in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his faultless

logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of

illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to-day,

who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless,

reviled by those whom he would relieve as bitterly as by those whose

supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage

for the amelioration of Ireland, and for the honor of the English name.

Garfield's nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or

anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in

Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his

then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as

a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled to be called

statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought him this high honor. "We

must," says Mr. Emerson, "reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric

is in robust health and has slept well and is at the top of his

condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland, he will

steer west, and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out and

put in a stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six hundred,

one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther, and reach Labrador and New

England. There is no chance in results."

As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met with

a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it

continued, with increasing volume and momentum, until the close of his

victorious campaign:

"No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure 'scape; backwounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What King so strong

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue."

Under it all he was calm and strong, and confident; never lost his

self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-considered

word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more

creditable than his bearing through those five full months of

vituperation--a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a constant

and cruel draught upon the powers of moral endurance. The great mass of

these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and with the general debris

of the campaign fell into oblivion. But, in a few instances, the iron

entered his soul, and he died with the injury unforgotten, if not

unforgiven.

One aspect of Garfield's candidacy was unprecedented. Never before in

the history of partisan contests in this country had a successful

presidential candidate spoken freely on passing events and current

issues. To attempt anything of the kind seemed novel, rash, and even

desperate. The older class of voters recalled the unfortunate Alabama

letter, in which Mr. Clay was supposed to have signed his political

death warrant. They remembered, also, the hot-tempered effusion by which

General Scott lost a large share of his popularity before his

nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly consumed the

remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley, in a series of

vigorous and original addresses, preparing the pathway for his own

defeat. Unmindful of these warnings, unheeding the advice of friends,

Garfield spoke to large crowds as he journeyed to and from New York in

August, to a great multitude in that city, to delegations and

deputations of every kind that called at Mentor during the summer and

autumn. With innumerable critics, watchful and eager to catch a phrase

that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence that might be

distorted to his own or his party's injury, Garfield did not trip or

halt in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems all the more

remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he said, and

yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such

admirable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and

the malignity of misrepresentation.

In the beginning of his presidential life, Garfield's experience did not

yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so large a

portion of the President's time were distasteful to him, and were

unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. "I have been dealing

all these years with ideas," he impatiently exclaimed one day, "and here

I am dealing only with persons. I have been heretofore treating of the

fundamental principles of government, and here I am considering all day

whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that office." He was

earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the evils arising

from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy patronage--evils always

appreciated and often discussed by him, but whose magnitude had been

more deeply impressed upon his mind since his accession to the

Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive improvement in the mode of

appointment and in the tenure of office, would have been proposed by

him, and, with the aid of Congress, no doubt perfected.

But, while many of the executive duties were not grateful to him, he was

assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. From the very outset he

exhibited administrative talent of a high order. He grasped the helm of

office with the hand of a master. In this respect, indeed, he constantly

surprised many who were most intimately associated with him in the

government, and especially those who had feared that he might be lacking

in the executive faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and

rapid. His power of analysis, and his skill in classification, enabled

him to dispatch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease.

His cabinet meetings were admirably conducted. His clear presentation of

official subjects, his well-considered suggestion of topics on which

discussion was invited, his quick decision when all had been heard,

combined to show a thoroughness of mental training, as rare as his

natural ability and his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged field of

labor.

With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with a

cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always by a

generous enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be done by his

administration toward restoring harmony between the different sections

of the Union. He was anxious to go South and speak to the people. As

early as April he had ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip to

Nashville, whither he had been cordially invited, and he was again

disappointed a few weeks later to find that he could not go to South

Carolina to attend the centennial celebration of the victory of the

Cowpens.

But for the autumn he definitely counted on being present at three

memorable assemblies in the South--the celebration at Yorktown, the

opening of the Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of the Army

of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already turning over in his

mind his address for each occasion, and the three taken together, he

said to a friend, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed. At

Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hundred years

that bound the South and the North in the sacred memory of a common

danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present the material

interests and the industrial development which appealed to the thrift

and independence of every household, and which should unite the two

sections by the instinct of self-interest and self-defence. At

Chattanooga he would revive memories of the war only to show that, after

all its disaster and all its suffering, the country was stronger and

greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, and the future, through the

agony and blood of one generation, made brighter and better for all.

Garfield's ambition for the success of his administration was high. With

strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no danger of

attempting rash experiments, or of resorting to the empiricism of

statesmanship. But he believed that renewed and closer attention should

be given to questions affecting the material interests and commercial

prospects of fifty millions of people. He believed that our continental

relations, extensive and undeveloped as they are, involved

responsibility, and could be cultivated into profitable friendship or be

abandoned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He believed, with

equal confidence, that an essential forerunner to a new era of national

progress must be a feeling of contentment in every section of the Union,

and a generous belief that the benefits and burdens of government would

be common to all. Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability and

ambition may do under Republican institutions, he loved his country with

a passion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to

her advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he

looked to the destiny and influence of the United States with the

philosophic composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence of

John Adams.

The political events which disturbed the President's serenity, for many

weeks before that fateful day in July, form an important chapter in his

career, and, in his own judgment, involved questions of principle and of

right which are vitally essential to the constitutional administration

of the federal government. It would be out of place here and now to

speak the language of controversy; but the events referred to, however

they may continue to be a source of contention with others, have become,

so far as Garfield is concerned, as much a matter of history as his

heroism at Chickamauga, or his illustrious service in the House. Detail

is not needful, and personal antagonism shall not be rekindled by any

word uttered to-day. The motives of those opposing him are not to be

here adversely interpreted nor their course harshly characterized. But

of the dead President this is to be said, and said because his own

speech is forever silenced and he can be no more heard except through

the fidelity and the love of surviving friends. From the beginning to

the end of the controversy he so much deplored, the President was never

for one moment actuated by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to

others. Least of all men did he harbor revenge; rarely did he even show

resentment, and malice was not in his nature. He was congenially

employed only in the exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly

deeds.

There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the fatal

shot entered his body, when the President would not gladly, for the sake

of restoring harmony, have retraced any step he had taken, if such

retracing had merely involved consequences personal to himself.

The pride of consistency, or any supposed sense of humiliation that

might result from surrendering his position, had not a feather's weight

with him. No man was ever less subject to such influences from within or

from without. But, after most anxious deliberation, and the coolest

survey of all the circumstances, he solemnly believed that the true

prerogatives of the executive were involved in the issue which had been

raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he

failed to maintain, in all their vigor, the constitutional rights and

dignities of his great office. He believed this in all the convictions

of conscience, when in sound and vigorous health, and he believed it in

his suffering and prostration in the last conscious thought which his

wearied mind bestowed on the transitory struggles of life.

More than this need not be said. Less than this could not be said.

Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the

living, demands the declaration that, in all the bearings of the

subject, actual or possible, the President was content in his mind,

justified in his conscience, immovable in his conclusions.

The religious element in Garfield's character was deep and earnest. In

his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that

great Baptist communion, which, in different ecclesiastical

establishments, is so numerous and so influential throughout all parts

of the United States. But the broadening tendency of his mind and his

active spirit of inquiry were early apparent, and carried him beyond the

dogmas of sect and the restraint of association. In selecting a college

in which to continue his education, he rejected Bethany, though presided

over by Alexander Campbell, the great preacher of his church. His

reasons were characteristic; first, that Bethany leaned too heavily

toward slavery; and, second, that being himself a Disciple and the son

of Disciple parents, he had little acquaintance with people of other

beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, quoting his own

words, both in his religious and general views, to go into a new circle

and be under new influences.

The liberal tendency which he anticipated, as the result of wider

culture, was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian

belief, and with eager interest pushed his investigations in the

direction of modern progressive thought. He followed with quickening

step in the paths of exploration and speculation so fearlessly trodden

by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by other living scientists of the

radical and advanced type. His own church binding its disciples by no

formulated creed, but accepting the Old and New Testaments as the word

of God, with unbiased liberty of private interpretation, favored, if it

did not stimulate, the spirit of investigation. Its members profess with

sincerity, and profess only, to be of one mind and one faith with those

who immediately followed the Master, and who were first called

Christians at Antioch.

But however high Garfield reasoned of "fixed fate, free will,

foreknowledge absolute," he was never separated from the Church of the

Disciples in his affections and in his associations. For him it held the

ark of the covenant. To him it was the gate of heaven. The world of

religious belief is full of solecisms and contradictions. A philosophic

observer declares that men by the thousand will die in defence of a

creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend, and whose tenets they

habitually violate. It is equally true that men by the thousands will

cling to church organizations with instinctive and undying fidelity,

when their belief in maturer years is radically different from that

which inspired them as neophytes.

But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of doubt,

Garfield came back always with freshness and delight to the simpler

instincts of religious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest

survive. Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks

of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on those topics of personal

religion, concerning which noble natures have an unconquerable reserve,

he said that he found the Lord's prayer and the simple petitions learned

in infancy, infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated

repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he went about the

daily duties of life. Certain texts of scriptures had a very strong hold

on his memory and his heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh some years

ago, an eminent Scotch preacher, who prefaced his sermon with reading

the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the

subject of careful study with Garfield during all his religious life. He

was greatly impressed by the elocution of the preacher, and declared

that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic utterances

of St. Paul. He referred often in after years to that memorable service,

and dwelt with exaltation of feeling upon the radiant promise and the

assured hope with which the great apostle of the Gentiles was

"persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,

nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor

depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the

love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The crowning characteristic of General Garfield's religious opinions,

as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he

had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the

qualities which he possessed himself--sincerity of conviction and

frankness of expression. With him the inquiry was not so much what a man

believes, but does he believe it? The lines of his friendship and his

confidence encircled men of every creed, and men of no creed, and to the

end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list of friends, were to be

found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest-minded and

generous hearted Free-Thinker.

On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the President was a contented and

happy man--not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly,

happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in

conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of

leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in a

grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial

his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in

popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties

confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that trouble

lay behind him and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife

whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately

disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his

Alma Mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young

manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest

had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered

upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in

the gift of his countrymen.

Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this

world, on that quiet July morning, James A. Garfield may well have been

a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition

of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant.

One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching

peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless,

doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the

very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he

was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,

its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death--and

he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned

and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,

but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that were not

less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he

looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes,

whose lips may tell--what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high

ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what

bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him, a proud expectant

nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy

mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the

wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet

emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the

sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every

day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his heart

the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation

and great darkness! and his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were

thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in

his moral weakness, he became the centre of a nation's love, enshrined

in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could

not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With

unfaltering front he faced death; with unfailing tenderness he took

leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard

the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree.

As the end drew near his early craving for the sea returned. The stately

mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he

begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling

air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the

love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing

of the sea, to live or die, as God should will, within sight of its

heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered

face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon

the ocean's changing wonders; on its far sails, whitening in the morning

light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward, to break and die

beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to

the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us

think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning, which only the rapt

and parting soul may know. Let us believe that, in the silence of the

receding world, he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore,

and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal

morning.

IV.

A THRENODY ON GARFIELD.

BY MRS. ELLEN KEY BLUNT.

How beautiful it was to die as he has died,

Taking a calm around him by the force

Of his great soul, commanding peace from strife,

And changing all the discord into rest,--

A heavenly music heard as life departs!

How wonderful it was that the accursed hate

Which smote him brought forth only loyal love;

Like to some holy bell that being struck

Resounds with wondrous sweetness, sounding on

Through all the spaces to eternity.

How noble was his dauntless fortitude

Which, as he lay expiring, day by day,

Made him almost control his destiny

And look upon his torture with a smile.

As his life wasted, in great patience, wonderingly

His watchers watched him. They were not alone

Of his own people, but his watchers were the world,

From far-off shores and seas with pitiful

Sad yearnings towards him as his star went down.

Nine times ten million souls in his own tongue

Prayed to the Almighty for his single life;

But he had risen too near to heaven in his great flight

To stoop again to earth, and so God took him,

Like a star folded in more perfect light.

And he is dead, and multitudes have come

To his dead presence, and, with solemn care,

Moving in silence to the measured strain

He loved, in mournful sweet monotony

Repeated as they bore him step by step

Through harvest-fields of ripening trodden grain,

They laid him reverently, gently down

Where all the sheaves of earth are garnered at the last.

Upon his pulseless form are richly piled

Wreaths, garlands, of the late yet lavish bloom

Of the perfected summer, with the exquisite thrill

Of life so fresh upon their shining leaves

Banners are furled around him, and the flag

We love droops mourning o'er the mourning land.

And from afar beyond our land and lakes,

From the great world that watched him wonderingly

Come kind farewells and tender sympathies.

Pity has told her tale in every tongue

And kings have claimed him comrade, hand in hand.

Fame has recorded him,

Love has rewarded him,

Mother, wife, children and people wept over him.

England accounted him

Kindred by blood.

All that are great and good

Have as his mourners stood

While he lay, day by day, passing away.

A Queen sends comforting words of cheer,

And flowers to fade on his bloody bier.

God save the Queen when her last hour is near!

The North was his by birth,

The South is his by death!

He conquered by suffering grandly borne

Our long-cherished strifes; they are gone, and now

Standing together we look on his pale dead face,

To whom we had given, the elected, a power more great

Than any king's. Together we revere

The majesty with which he laid it down

At God's command. Together we shall love

His memory, and each other for his sake,

And for the heart so high that it "could hate no man."

God rest him! He has rested him!

Nothing can "hurt" him more,

"Nothing can touch him further."

More than a king he lies

With the strong blaze of the world's homage

Full on his closed eyes.

American, born in the forest,

The great lake for him sighs,

And England, crowned and sceptered,

Loves him as he dies.

He fought in the deathly valley

From morn till the set of sun,

Till eighty days had run.

Then he folded his arms

And his day was done.

Oh, the bloom is off of the prairie,

The butterfly's change is begun,

The pine cone flowers eternal,

The eagle has soared to the sun!

* * * * *

JUDGE BURNHAM'S DAUGHTERS. By "Pansy."

(Mrs G. R. Alden), Boston. D. Lothrop Co. Price $1.50. The multitude of

readers of Mrs. Alden's stories will remember _Ruth Erskine's Crosses_,

and will be glad to meet its principal character once more in her new

character of wife and mother, ripened by experience and strengthened by

trial. Her marriage will be remembered, and the radiant prospects of the

future which attended it. Her husband was kindness itself, but he cared

little for religious matters, and could not sympathize with what seemed

to him the very ridiculous and puritanical ideas of his wife regarding

many things. Still he always gave way to her. The great trouble of her

new life, however, was the disposition evinced by her two step-daughters

to resist her authority and cause her pain by their recklessness and

disobedience. Her husband, Judge Burnham, was wealthy, and occupied a

high social position. He was exceedingly proud of his family and

sensitive as to his reputation. He was strongly opposed to Ruth's being

actively connected with religious or temperance movements, and this fact

sometimes brought them dangerously near serious misunderstanding. The

pressure was constant, and made many unhappy hours for her, especially

when questions of right and propriety arose between her and her

step-daughters and an appeal was made to the father. Suddenly a blow

fell upon the house. The younger daughter fled from home to marry a

gambler and forger, and was disowned by her father and forbidden the

house. A few months later the other daughter fell a victim to quick

consumption, but in her later days turned to the mother whom she had

disliked and disobeyed, and finally died in her arms. The story with its

later incidents is a sad one, but its darkness is lighted by the

surprise which awaits the reader at the close. It is written in Mrs.

Alden's usual fascinating style and like all her books, is transfixed

with a purpose.

OLD CONCORD: HER HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. Ill. By Margaret Sidney. Boston,

D. Lothrop Co. Price $3.00. Of all the books of the year there is not

one which carries within it such an aroma of peculiar delight as this

series of sketches and descriptions of the highways and byways of that

most picturesque of towns, Old Concord. Concord is like no other place

in New England. There may be other places as beautiful in their way,

there are others, perhaps, of more importance in the Commonwealth and we

know there are hundreds of places where there is more active life to the

square foot, but with all these admissions Concord still remains a place

of special charm, the result and consequence of more causes than we care

to analyze. Its picturesqueness and a certain quaintness of the village

has always been noticed by visitors, no matter from what part of the

globe they may have come. Added to this is the flavor of Revolutionary

history, and the atmosphere created by the daily lives and presence for

years of three or four of the giants in American literature. Here lived

Hawthorne and Emerson, and Thoreau, and the Alcotts, father and

daughter, and the work that they did here has made it a literary Mecca

for all time.

These sketches have all the accuracy of photographs, together with that

charm of color and life which a photograph never possesses. The author

is a resident of Concord, and a dweller in one of its historic mansions,

and is thoroughly acquainted with every nook and corner of the town as

well as with every legend which belongs to them. The task which she

assumes of guiding readers to the places made famous by pen and sword is

a labor of love. She tells us how the pilgrimage should be undertaken,

and what should be seen. We visit with her the ancient landmarks which

belong to past generations, and the more modern ones which have even

more interest to the multitude.

THE STORY OF OHIO. By Alexander Black. Being the second volume of the

new series, the "Story of the States," edited by Elbridge S. Brooks. One

volume, 8vo, fully illustrated. Boston. D. Lothrop Co. Price $1.50

The fact that Ohio has just passed her hundredth birthday, and that she

will throughout the year be engaged in various interesting forms of

civic celebration, renders singularly opportune the appearance of this

compact and picturesque narrative in which the reader will find a

complete picture of Buckeye progress, a picture etched rather than

painted, for the book is not of formidable length, and the author has

been compelled to adopt a crisp and nimble style to tell his story in

due space. The term "story" is an elastic, and perhaps not always an

accurately descriptive one. In this instance the author has given it a

simple and effective definition by making it stand for a direct, natural

and often dramatic account of Ohio's romantic origin and extraordinary

development. While a preference for the picturesque phases of the story

is shown even in the treatment of the most practical elements of State

character, there is an obvious selection of those pictorial traits which

have in themselves a special significance, and which, taken in the

group, present the essential characteristics of the commonwealth. Indeed

the narrative affords an excellent opportunity for discovering the

immense individuality of Ohio in the great family of States. The great

diversity of character among the States, diversities engendered by

geographical as well as by ancestral conditions, is, perhaps not very

generally recognized. The promising series of which this volume forms

the second issue cannot fail, if each author continues to work with care

and sincerity, to broaden our knowledge of all the elements that go to

form our character as a nation, and to deepen that sense of fraternal

sympathy, the cultivation of which has become a point of national

pride.

SOME SUCCESSFUL WOMEN. By Sarah K. Bolton. With Portraits. Boston. D.

Lothrop Co. Price $1.25. Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton is the author of several

interesting books which have given her a wide reputation and this new

volume from her pen will be warmly welcomed. It consists of twelve brief

biographies of American women who have in various walks and professions

earned success so marked as to make their names familiar to every

household in the country, and who have done much to inspire others of

their sex to follow in their footsteps. Among them are Marion Harland

(Mrs. Terhune), Mrs. G. R. Allen (Pansy), Clara Barton, the

philanthropist, Alice Freeman, the former president of Wellesley

College, Rachel Bodley, dean of the Woman's Medical College,

Philadelphia, Frances E. Willard, whose labors in behalf of temperance

have given her a place among the foremost of American women. Mrs.

Candace Wheeler and her daughter Dora who have done so much to develop

the love for decorative art in this country and to create opportunities

for its practical application, with others who have gained equally

distinguished places in other departments of art, literature and

industry. The portraits add greatly to the interest of the sketches.

THE LOST EARL. By J. T. Trowbridge. Ill. Boston. D. Lothrop Co. Price

$2.00. This volume will be warmly welcomed by the admirers of Mr.

Trowbridge--and they are legion. Although Mr. Trowbridge is better known

as a successful novelist and writer of juvenile stories he is one of the

truest of our American poets and it is to be regretted that he has not

oftener turned his attention to verse. His themes, though not ambitious,

are always high and his poems are marked by feeling, naturalness and

exquisite finish. _The Lost Earl_ has never before been printed in book

form. It is the story of the revolt of a strong soul against

conventional society life and the casting aside of rank for social

freedom.

THE SECRETS AT ROSELADIES. By Mary Hartwell Catherwood. Boston, D.

Lothrop Company. Price $1.00. This charming story of the life on the

Wabash, which originally appeared as a serial in WIDE AWAKE, will be

read by boys and girls with equal pleasure, for the action of the story

is pretty well divided between the two. The boys will be immensely

entertained with the adventures of the four young treasure-seekers,

particularly with that which ends in their capture by the crazy

half-breed Shawnee, who proposes to cut off their thumbs to bury in the

excavation they have made in the burial mound. The girls' secret, which

is of a very different character, is just as amusing in its way. Mrs.

Catherwood has a wonderful fund of humor, and a talent for description

which many a better known author might envy. The character of old Mr.

Roseladies is capitally drawn, and the account of his journey to the

depot after Aunt Jane's trunk is really mirth provoking. Cousin Sarah

and "Sister" and little Nonie are all charming and the reader will close

the book with regret that there is not more of it.

BROWNIES AND BOGLES. By Louise Imogen Guiney. Ill. Boston, D. Lothrop

Co. Price $1.00. This little volume might be fitly styled a fairy

handbook, as in it the author describes every kind of the "little

people" that is found in traditions or literature in all the countries

of the world. There are the brownies and waterkelpies of Scotland, the

troll and necken of Sweden, the German kobalds, the English fairies,

pixies and elves, the Norwegian and Danish dwarfs and bjorgfalls, the

Irish leprechauns, and a score of others, some of whom are mischievous,

some malicious, some house-helpers, and some who are always waiting to

do a good turn to those they like. The author mingles her descriptions

with anecdotes illustrative of the different qualities and dispositions

of the various fairy folk described.

STORY OF THE AMERICAN SAILOR. By E. S. Brooks. Ill. Boston. D. Lothrop

Co. Price $2.50. Although several volumes have been written descriptive

of the rise and development of the American navy, this is the first and

only work of which we have knowledge that takes wide ground, and deals

with the American sailor. In its preparation Mr. Brooks has not been

actuated by a desire to merely make a readable book for boys, he has

given it the attention which the subject demands as a part of the

history of the country.

It would be a difficult matter to get at the first American sailor, or

to even guess when he existed but that our continent was once well

populated, and that its prehistoric inhabitants sailed the lakes and

seas as well as trod the land, is a matter of certainty. Later when

America became known to Europeans, the new comers found Indians well

provided with excellent canoes, built of bark or fashioned from logs,

but they were "near shore" sailors. The author quotes one instance where

a deep sea voyage was undertaken by them in the early days of the

English settlers. Certain Carolina Indians he says, wearied of the white

man's sinful ways in trade, thought themselves able to deal direct with

the consumers across the "Big Sea Water." So they built several large

canoes and loading these with furs and tobacco paddled straight out to

sea bound for England. But their ignorance of navigation speedily got

the best of their valor. They were never heard of more.

The early white navigators of our waters can hardly be considered

American sailors. The new found continent was to them of value only for

what could be brought away from them in treasure or in merchantable

produce, and it was only when an actual and permanent colonization began

that a race of native-born sailors was developed on the Atlantic

coasts.

NED HARWOOD'S VISIT TO JERUSALEM. Ill. Boston. D. Lothrop Co. Price

$1.25. This is a story, instructively told of a young boy who made a

visit to Jerusalem, and other places in the Holy Land, and saw many of

the places made interesting in the Biblical narrative. The author's

personal knowledge of the localities visited enables her to give vivid

and accurate descriptions of them. The book is very handsomely bound in

colored cover from original designs.

LONGFELLOW REMEMBRANCE BOOK. By Samuel Longfellow. Introduction by E. S.

Brooks. Ill. Boston. D. Lothrop Co. Price $1.25. It needs no special

memorial to perpetuate the memory of Longfellow and yet this little

volume has an interest and a mission which are sufficient reasons for

its existence. Its narrative testifies to the love and admiration which

the whole English-speaking people felt for that sweetest of poets and

most admirable of men, and it touches upon those qualities which, apart

from his song, endeared him to every one that knew him. "Old and young,"

says Mr. Brooks in his brief introduction, "rich and poor, found in him

inspiration, counsel, sympathy and help, and his words touched more

closely the great, beating human heart than did those of even greater

and diviner poets." With the exception of the introduction, Whittier's

poem called out by the death of Longfellow,--"The Poet and the

Children"--"An International Episode" and Miss Guiney's "Longfellow in

Westminster Abbey"--the contents of the book are from the pen of the

Rev. Samuel Longfellow. In loving detail he writes of the childhood and

boyhood of his brother, his later years, his love for children and of

his life at his charming home at Cambridge. A closing chapter from

another hand describes the unveiling of the poet's bust in Westminster

Abbey, March 1, 1884. The volume is beautifully illustrated.

A STRANGE COMPANY. By Charles Frederick Holder. Illustrated. Boston. D.

Lothrop Company. Price $1.25. No American naturalist of late years has

written more comprehensively or entertainingly than Dr. Holder. The

books and magazine articles from his pen would make a small library and

an exceedingly valuable one. For seven years he was assistant in the

American Museum of Natural History in New York and later was connected

with the New York Aquarium, in whose interests he made extensive

journeys for rare specimens. In the present volume, which is prepared

for young readers, he describes some of the more remarkable specimens of

animal life and their peculiarities. Many of the facts he cites will be

new to older readers such, for instance, as that of fishes climbing

trees and traveling considerable distances overland from water to water,

of birds that fly under water the same as in the air, of four footed

animals with bills and of birds with teeth. In a chapter devoted to the

speech of animals we are told how some of the noises made by insects are

produced undoubtedly for purposes of communication and how birds, fishes

and animals convey intelligence one to another. In another chapter the

sports and games of animals are dealt with. The author says, "I doubt if

an animal can be found which does not in some way or at some time show a

desire for what we term amusement. The Malayan sun bear is remarkable

for its fun loving natur. The common black bear is almost equally

playful and in some of its rough and tumble games in a tree top are some

of the most interesting performances I have ever witnessed. Even crabs

have a sense of humor and go through certain performance, presumably

games. In Australia there are birds that build playhouses, aside from

their nests, in the form of an arbor sometimes two or three feet long,

which they decorate with bright objects."

A YOUNG PRINCE OF COMMERCE. By Selden R. Hopkins. Boston. D. Lothrop

Company. Price $1.25. We do not know of a better book to put into the

hands of boys for the purpose of teaching them the fundamental

principles of business than this little volume, which Mr. Hopkins has so

ingeniously prepared. Most boys grow into young men without the

slightest knowledge of business matters excepting mere buying and

selling. The very things that should have been taught them in school at

the same time with grammar and geography they know nothing about, and

while their heads may be stocked with the rules of syntax and the names

and boundaries of all the countries in the world, they may be helpless

as babies in the transaction of any business that requires the use of

forms or legal methods. It is one of the senseless peculiarities of our

school system that it excludes certain subjects of study that are

absolutely necessary and gives place to others that are practically

useless. It is on that account that we strongly commend this little work

as a supplementary reader in schools. In its pages Mr. Hopkins tells an

interesting story and sandwiches in between its incidents just the

information to which we have reference. The boy who reads it has

obtained, when he has finished it, a clear understanding of the

principles of trade. He knows the character of mortgages, notes, drafts,

stocks and bonds, the theory of banking, discount, exchange and

collateral, he learns all about the mysteries of Wall Street and how the

brokerage business is conducted; in fine, he gets an excellent

understanding of the way business is carried on in general. All this

knowledge comes in incidentally, and in connection with the story. The

book is very handsomely printed and bound.

MARY THE MOTHER. Compiled by Rose Porter. Ill. Boston. D. Lothrop Co.

Price $3.00. The purpose of this beautiful volume is to give an outline

story of Mary the Mother Maid, as told in the Holy Book, and by

historical and legendary art, and in poetry. The theme, says the

compiler in her preface, "though it lies within prescribed limits, is

wide enough to embrace a broad field of thought, for it deals with all

the most beautiful and precious productions of human genius and human

skill as manifested by art which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

have bequeathed to us, and in them we can trace, present in shape before

us, or suggested through inevitable associations, one prevailing idea.

It is that of an impersonation in the feminine character of beneficence,

purity and power, clothed in the visible form of Mary, the Mother of our

Lord."

The story is told in the purest devotional spirit. The curious legends

which have been handed down or created by the religious writers of the

Middle Ages are put into consecutive order, and illustrated by

reproductions of pictures by the old masters, and of those by two or

three modern painters. Deger's famous picture of "The Annunciation"

serves as the frontispiece. Then follows in order Ittenbach's "St. Mary

the Virgin," Titian's "Presentation," the "Annunciation," by Murillo,

"The Salutation," by Albertinelli, "St. John and the Virgin," by Dobson;

"The Assumption," by Titian, "Mater Dolorosa," by Guido Reni, "Mater

Dolorosa," by Carlo Dolce, and "The Madonna Addolorata," by

Sassaferrato. These are exquisitely reproduced, and are printed, as well

as the text, on heavy, hot-pressed paper. The volume is bound in cloth,

with a cover of special design.

THE ART OF LIVING. From the Writings of Samuel Smiles. With Introduction

by the venerable Dr. Peabody of Harvard University and Biographical

Sketch by the editor Carrie Adelaide Cooke. Boston. D. Lothrop Company.

Price $1.00.

Samuel Smiles is the Benjamin Franklin of England. His sayings have a

similar terseness, aptness and force, they are directed to practical

ends, like Franklin's, they have the advantage of being nearer our time

and therefore more directly related to subjects upon which practical

wisdom is of practical use.

Success in life is his subject all through The Art of Living, and he

confesses on the very first page that "happiness consists in the

enjoyment of little pleasures scattered along the common path of life,

which in the eager search for some great and exciting joy we are apt to

overlook. It finds delight in the performance of common duties

faithfully and honorably fulfilled."

Let the reader go back to that quotation again and consider how contrary

it is to the spirit that underlies the businesses that are nowadays

tempting men to sudden fortune, torturing with disappointments nearly

all who yield, and burdening the successful beyond their endurance,

shortening lives and making them weary and most of them empty.

Is it worth while to join the mad rush for the lottery, or to take the

old road to slow success?

This book of the chosen thoughts of a rare philosopher leads to

contentment as well as wisdom, for, when we choose the less brilliant

course because we are sure it is the best one, we have the most complete

and lasting repose from anxiety.

TILTING AT WINDMILLS. A Story of the Blue Grass Country. By Emma M.

Connelly. Boston. D. Lothrop Company. 12mo, $1.50.

Not since the days of "A Fool's Errand" has so strong and so

characteristic a "border novel" been brought to the attention of the

public as is now presented by Miss Connelly in this book which she so

aptly terms "Tilting at Windmills". Indeed, it is questionable whether

Judge Tourgee's famous book touched so deftly and yet so practically the

real phases of the reconstruction period and the interminable

antagonisms of race and section.

The self sufficient Boston man, a capital fellow at heart, but tinged

with the traditions and environments of his Puritan ancestry and

conditions, coming into his strange heritage in Kentucky at the close of

the civil war, seeks to change by instant manipulation all the equally

strong and deep-rooted traditions and environments of Blue Grass

society.

His ruthless conscience will allow of no compromise, and the people whom

he seeks to proselyte alike misunderstand his motives and spurn his

proffered assistance.

Presumed errors are materialized and partial evils are magnified.

Allerton tilts at windmills and with the customary Quixotic results. He

is, seemingly, unhorsed in every encounter.

Miss Connelly's work in this, her first novel, will make readers anxious

to hear from her again and it will certainly create, both in her own and

other States, a strong desire to see her next forthcoming work announced

by the same publishers in one of their new series--her "Story of the

State of Kentucky."

The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and Letters · 第 50 / 50 章

I cannot, within the limits assigned to me, recount every circumstance