A COUSIN'S REMINISCENCES.
During his school-life at Geauga Seminary James enjoyed the
companionship of a cousin, Henry B. Boynton, who still lives on the farm
adjoining the one on which our hero was born. The relationship between
the two boys was much closer than is common between cousins; for while
their mothers were sisters, their fathers were half-brothers. Henry was
two years older than James, and they were more like brothers than
cousins. I am sure my young readers will be glad to read what Henry has
to say of their joint school-life. I quote from the account of an
interview held with a correspondent of the Boston _Herald_, bearing the
date of September 23, 1881:
When General Garfield was nominated to the Presidency his old neighbors
in Orange erected a flag-staff where the house stood which Garfield and
his brother erected for their mother and sisters with their own hands,
after the log hut, a little farther out in the field nearer the wood,
had become unfit for habitation. Thomas Garfield, the uncle of the
President, who not long since was killed by a railroad accident,
directed the manual labor of rearing the shaft, and was proud of his
work.
There is nothing except this hole left to mark his birth-place, and the
old well, not two rods off, which he and his brother dug to furnish
water for the family. In the little maple grove to the left, children
played about the school-house where the dead President first gathered
the rudiments upon which he built to such purpose. The old orchard in
its sere and yellow leaf, the dying grass, and the turning maple leaves
seemed to join in the great mourning.
Adjoining the field where the flag floats is an unpretentious home,
almost as much identified with Gen. Garfield's early history as the one
he helped to clear of the forest timber while he was yet but a child. It
is the home of Henry B. Boynton, cousin of the dead President, and a
brother of Dr. Boynton, whose name has become so well known from recent
events.
"While rambling over this place the correspondent came upon this near
relative of Garfield, smaller in stature than he was, but in features
bearing a striking resemblance to him.
"General Garfield and I were like brothers," he said, as he turned from
giving some directions to his farm hands, now sowing the fall grain upon
ground which his cousin had first helped to break. "His father died
yonder, within a stone's throw of us, when the son was but a year and a
half old. He knew no other father than mine, who watched over the family
as if it had been his own. This very house in which I live was as much
his home as it was mine.
"Over there," said he, pointing to the brick school-house in the grove
of maples, around which the happy children were playing, "is where he
and I both started for school. I have read a statement that he could not
read or write until he was nineteen. He could do both before he was
nine, and before he was twelve, so familiar was he with the Indian
history of the country, that he had named every tree in the orchard,
which his father planted as he was born, with the name of some Indian
chief, and even debated in societies, religion, and other topics with
men. One favorite tree of his he named Tecumseh, and the branches of
many of these old trees have been cut since his promotion to the
Presidency by relic-hunters, and carried away.
"Gen. Garfield was a remarkable boy as well as man. It is not possible
to tell you the fight he made amid poverty for a place in life, and how
gradually he obtained it. When he was a boy he would rather read than
work. But he became a great student. He had to work after he was twelve
years of age. In those days we were all poor, and it took hard knocks to
get on. He worked clearing the fields yonder with his brother, and then
cut cord-wood, and did other farm labor to get the necessities of life
for his mother and sisters.
"I remember when he was fourteen years of age, he went away to work at
Daniel Morse's, not four miles down the road from here, and after the
labors of the day he sat down to listen to the conversation of a teacher
in one of the schools of Cleveland, when it was yet a village, who had
called. The talk of the educated man pleased the boy, and, while intent
upon his story, a daughter of the man for whom he was working informed
the future President with great dignity that it was time that _servants_
were in bed, and that she preferred his absence to his presence.
"Nothing that ever happened to him so severely stung him as this
affront. In his youth he could never refer to it without indignation,
and almost immediately he left Mr. Morse's employ and went on the canal.
He said to me then that those people should live to see the day when
they would not care to insult him.
"His experience on the canal was a severe one, but perhaps useful. I can
remember the winter when he came home after the summer's service there.
He had the chills all that fall and winter, yet he would shake and get
his lessons at home; go over to the school and recite, and thus keep up
with his class. The next spring found him weak from constant ague. Yet
he intended to return to the canal.
"Here came the turning-point in his life. Mr. Bates, who taught the
school, pleaded with him not to do so, and said that if he would
continue in school till the next fall he could get a certificate. I
received a certificate about the same time The next year we went to the
seminary at Chester, only twelve miles distant. Here our books were
furnished us, and we cooked our own victuals. We lived upon a dollar a
week each. Our diet was strong, but very plain; mush and molasses, pork
and potatoes. Saturdays we took our axes, and went into the woods and
cut cord-wood. During vacations we labored in the harvest-field, or
taught a district school, as we could.
"Yonder," said he, pointing to a beautiful valley, about two miles
distant, "stands the school-house where Garfield first taught school. He
got twelve dollars a month, and boarded round. I also taught school in a
neighboring town. We both went back to Chester to college, and would
probably have finished our education there, but it was a Baptist school,
and they were constantly making flings at the children of the Disciples,
and teaching sectarianism. As the Disciples grew stronger they
determined their children should not be subjected to such influence; the
college of our own Church was established at Hiram, and there Garfield
and I went."
Though the remainder of the reminiscences somewhat anticipate the
course of our story, it is perhaps as well to insert it here.
"We lodged in the basement most of the time, and boarded at the present
Mrs. Garfield's father's house. During our school-days here I nursed the
late President through an attack of the measles which nearly ended his
life. He has often said, that, were it not for my attention, he could
not have lived. So you see that the General and myself were very close
to one another from the time either of us could lisp until he became
President. Here is a picture we had taken together," showing an old
daguerreotype. "It does not resemble either of us much now. And yet they
do say that we bore in our childhood, and still bear, a striking
resemblance. I am still a farmer, while he grew great and powerful. He
never permitted a suggestion, however, to be made in, my presence as to
the difference in our paths of life. He visited me here before election,
and looked with gratification upon that pole yonder, and its flag,
erected by his neighbors and kinsmen. He wandered over the fields he had
himself helped clear and pointed out to me trees from the limbs of which
he had shot squirrel after squirrel, and beneath the branches of which
he had played and worked in the years of his infancy and boyhood.
"I forgot to say that one of Gen. Garfield's striking characteristics
while he was growing up, was, that when he saw a boy in the class excel
him in anything, he never gave up till he reached the same standard, and
even went beyond it. It got to be known that no scholar could be ahead
of him. Our association as men has been almost as close as that of our
boyhood, though not as constant. The General never forgot his neighbors
or less fortunate kinsmen, and often visited us as we did him."
More vivid than any picture I could draw is this description, by the
most intimate friend of his boyhood, of James Garfield's way of life,
his struggles for an education, his constant desire to excel, and his
devotion to duty. We have already pictured the rustic boy in his humble
room, cooking his own food, and living, as his cousin testifies, on a
dollar a week. Is there any other country where such humble beginnings
could lead to such influence and power? Is there any other land where
such a lad could make such rapid strides toward the goal which crowns
the highest ambition? It is the career of such men that most commends
our Government and institutions, proving as it does that by the humblest
and poorest the highest dignities may be attained. James was content to
live on mush and molasses, pork and potatoes, since they came within his
narrow means, and gave him sufficient strength to pursue his cherished
studies. Nor is his an exceptional case. I have myself known college and
professional students who have lived on sixty cents a week (how, it is
difficult to tell), while their minds were busy with the loftiest
problems that have ever engaged the human intellect. Such boys and young
men are the promise of the republic. They toil upwards while others
sleep, and many such have written their names high on the tablets in the
Temple of Fame.