THE SCHOLAR IN POLITICS.
In the midst of his political and professional activity, Garfield never
forgot his days of tranquil enjoyment at Hiram College, when he was
devoted solely to the cultivation of his mind, and the extension of his
knowledge. He still cherished the same tastes, and so far as his
leisure--he had no leisure, save time snatched from the engrossing
claims of politics--so far, at any rate, as he could manage the time, he
employed it for new acquisitions, or for the review of his earlier
studies.
In January, 1874, he made a metrical version of the third ode of
Horace's first book. I quote four stanzas:
"Guide thee, O ship, on thy journey, that owest
To Africa's shores Virgil trusted to thee.
I pray thee restore him, in safety restore him,
And saving him, save me the half of my soul.
"Stout oak and brass triple surrounded his bosom
Who first to the waves of the merciless sea
Committed his frail bark. He feared not Africa's
Fierce battling the gales of the furious North.
"Nor feared he the gloom of the rain-bearing Hyads
Nor the rage of fierce Notus, a tyrant than whom
No storm-god that rules o'er the broad Adriatic
Is mightier its billows to rouse or to calm.
"What form, or what pathway of death him affrighted
Who faced with dry eyes monsters swimming the deep,
Who gazed without fear on the storm-swollen billows,
And the lightning-scarred rocks, grim with death on the shore?"
In reviewing the work of the year 1874, he writes: "So far as individual
work is concerned, I have done something to keep alive my tastes and
habits. For example, since I left you I have made a somewhat thorough
study of Goethe and his epoch, and have sought to build up in my mind a
picture of the state of literature and art in Europe, at the period when
Goethe began to work, and the state when he died. I have grouped the
various poets into order, so as to preserve memoirs of the impression
made upon my mind by the whole. The sketch covers nearly sixty pages of
manuscript. I think some work of this kind, outside the track of one's
every-day work, is necessary to keep up real growth."
In July, 1875, he gives a list of works that he had read recently. Among
these are several plays of Shakespeare, seven volumes of Froude's
England, and a portion of Green's "History of the English People." He
did not limit himself to English studies, but entered the realms of
French and German literature, having made himself acquainted with both
these languages. He made large and constant use of the Library of
Congress. Probably none of his political associates made as much, with
the exception of Charles Sumner.
Major Bundy gives some interesting details as to his method of work,
which I quote: "In all his official, professional, and literary work,
Garfield has pursued a system that has enabled him to accumulate, on a
vast range and variety of subjects, an amount of easily available
information such as no one else has shown the possession of by its use.
His house at Washington is a workshop, in which the tools are always
kept within immediate reach. Although books overrun his house from top
to bottom, his library contains the working material on which he mainly
depends. And the amount of material is enormous. Large numbers of
scrap-books that have been accumulating for over twenty years, in number
and in value--made up with an eye to what either is, or may become,
useful, which would render the collection of priceless value to the
library of any first-class newspaper establishment--are so perfectly
arranged and indexed, that their owner with his all-retentive memory,
can turn in a moment to the facts that may be needed for almost any
conceivable emergency in debate.
"These are supplemented by diaries that preserve Garfield's multifarous
political, scientific, literary, and religious inquiries, studies, and
readings. And, to make the machinery of rapid work complete, he has a
large box containing sixty-three different drawers, each properly
labeled, in which he places newspaper cuttings, documents, and slips of
paper, and from which he can pull out what he wants as easily as an
organist can play on the stops of his instrument. In other words, the
hardest and most masterful worker in Congress has had the largest and
most scientifically arranged of workshops."
It was a pleasant house, this, which Garfield had made for himself in
Washington. With a devoted wife, who sympathized with him in his
literary tastes, and aided him in his preparation for his literary work,
with five children (two boys now at Williams College, one daughter, and
two younger sons), all bright and promising, with a happy and joyous
temperament that drew around him warmly-attached friends, with a mind
continually broadening and expanding in every direction, respected and
appreciated by his countrymen, and loved even by his political
opponents, Garfield's lot seemed and was a rarely happy one. He worked
hard, but he had always enjoyed work. Higher honors seemed hovering in
the air, but he did not make himself anxious about them. He enjoyed
life, and did his duty as he went along, ready to undertake new
responsibilities whenever they came, but by no means impatient for
higher honors.
Filling an honored place in the household is the white-haired mother,
who, with justifiable pride, has followed the fortunes of her son from
his destitute boyhood, along the years in which he gained strength by
battling with poverty and adverse circumstances, to the time when he
fills the leading place in the councils of the nation. So steadily has
he gone on, step by step, that she is justified in hoping for him higher
honors.
The time came, and he was elected to the United States Senate in place
of Judge Thurman, who had ably represented the State in the same body,
and had been long regarded as one of the foremost leaders of the
Democratic party. But his mantle fell upon no unworthy successor. Ohio
was fortunate in possessing two such men to represent her in the highest
legislative body of the nation.
Doubtless this honor would have come sooner to Garfield, for in 1877 he
was the candidate to whom all eyes were directed, but he could not be
spared from the lower House, there being no one to take his place as
leader. He yielded to the expressed wishes of President Hayes, who, in
the exceptional position in which he found himself, felt the need of a
strong and able man in the House, to sustain his administration and help
carry out the policy of the Government. Accustomed to yield his own
interest to what he regarded as the needs of his country, Garfield
quietly acquiesced in what to most men would have been a severe
disappointment.
But when, after the delay of four years, he was elected to the Senate,
he accepted with a feeling of satisfaction--not so much because he was
promoted as because, in his new sphere of usefulness, he would have more
time for the gratification of his literary tastes.
In a speech thanking the members of the General Assembly for their
support, he said:
"And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of
party, I recognize this tribute and compliment paid to me to-night.
Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the
inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this occasion
and from these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of
obligation that I feel to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point a
single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years that I
have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the
United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or
otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my conviction at
whatever cost to myself.
"I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose
approbation I greatly desired; but, though it may seem, perhaps, a
little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation
of one person, and his name was Garfield. [Laughter and applause]. He is
the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live
with, and die with; and, if I could not have his approbation, I should
have had companionship. [Renewed laughter and applause]. And in this
larger constituency which has called me to represent them now, I can
only do what is true to my best self, following the same rule. And if I
should be so unfortunate as to lose the confidence of this larger
constituency, I must do what every other fair-minded man has to
do--carry his political life in his hand and take the consequences. But
I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe rule of my life; and
with that view of the case, and with that much personal reference, I
leave that subject."
This speech gives the key-note of Garfield's political action. More than
once he endangered his re-election and hazarded his political future by
running counter to what he knew to be the wishes of his constituents and
his party; but he would never allow himself to be a slave to party, or
wear the yoke of political expediency. He sought, first of all, to win
the approval of his own conscience and his own sense of right, and then
he was willing to "take the consequences," even if they were serious
enough to cut short the brilliant career which he so much enjoyed.
I conceive that in this respect he was a model whom I may safely hold up
for the imitation of my readers, young or old. Such men do credit to the
country, and if Garfield's rule of life could be universally adopted,
the country would never be in peril. A conscientious man may make
mistakes of judgment but he can never go far astray.