From Canal Boy to President; Or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield by - (good short books txt) 📗

House, such as will live in history, he would turn to me, or any one else, and say: 'Well, old boy, how was that?' Every man was his confidant and friend, so far as the interchange of every-day good feeling was concerned.

"He once told me how he prepared his speeches; that first he filled himself with the subject, massing all the facts and principles involved, so far as he could; then he took pen and paper and wrote down the salient points in what he regarded their logical order. Then he scanned them critically, and fixed them in his memory. 'And then,' said he, 'I leave the paper in my room and trust to the emergency.' He told me that when he spoke at the serenade in New York a year ago, he was so pressed by callers that the only opportunity he had for preparation was, to lock the door and walk three times around the table, when he was called out to the balcony to begin. All the world knows what that speech was.

"He was wrapped up in his family. His two boys would come up to the House just before adjournment, and loiter about his desk with their books in their hands. After the House adjourned, other members would go off in cars or carriages, or walk down the avenue in groups. But Garfield, with a boy on each side of him, would walk down Capitol Hill, as we would say in the country 'cross-lots,' all three chatting together on equal terms.

"He said to me one day during the canvass, while the tears came to his eyes, 'I have done no more in coming up from poverty than hundreds and thousands of others, but I am thankful that I have been able to keep my family by my side, and educate my children.'

"He was a man with whom anybody could differ with impunity. I have said repeatedly, that were Garfield alive and fully recovered, and a dozen of his intimate friends were to go to him, and advise that Guiteau be let off, he would say, 'Yes, let him go.' The man positively knew no malice. And for such a man to be shot and tortured like a dog, and by a dog!

"He was extremely sensitive. I have seen him come into the House in the morning, when some guerrilla of the press had stabbed him deeper in his feelings than Guiteau's bullet did in the body, and when he looked pallid from suffering, and the evident loss of sleep; but he would utter no murmur, and in some short time his great exuberance of spirits would surmount it all, and he would be a boy again.

"He never went to lunch without a troop of friends with him. He loved to talk at table, and there is no gush in saying he talked a God socially and intellectually. Some of his off-hand expressions were like a burst of inspiration. Like all truly great men, he did not seem to realize his greatness. And, as I have said, he would talk as cordially and confidentially with a child as with a monarch. And I only refer to his conversations with me because you ask me to, and because I think his off-hand conversations with any one reveal his real traits best.

"Coming on the train from Washington, after his nomination, he said: 'Only think of this! I am yet a young man? if elected and I serve my term I shall still be a young man. Then what am I going to do? There seems to be no place in America for an ex-President.'

"And then came in what I thought the extreme simplicity and real nobility of the man. 'Why,' said he, 'I had no thought of being nominated. I had bought me some new books, and was getting ready for the Senate.'

"I laughed at the idea of his buying books, like a boy going to college, and remembered that during his Congressional career he had furnished materials for a few books himself. And then, with that peculiar roll of the body and slap on the shoulder with the left hand, which all will recognize, he said: 'Why! do you know that up to 1856 I never saw a Congressional Globe, nor knew what one was!' And he then explained how he stumbled upon one in the hands of an opponent in his first public anti-slavery debate.

"A friend remarked the other day that Garfield would get as enthusiastic in digging a six-foot ditch with his own hands, as when making a speech in Congress. Such was my observation. Going down the lane, he seemed to forget for the time that there was any Presidential canvass pending. He would refer, first to one thing, then another, with that off-hand originality which was his great characteristic. Suddenly picking up a smooth, round pebble, he said, 'Look at that! Every stone here sings of the sea.'

"Asking why he bought his farm, he said he had been reading about metals, how you could draw them to a certain point a million times and not impair their strength, but if you passed that point once, you could never get them back. 'So,' said he, 'I bought this farm to rest the muscles of my mind!' Coming to two small wooden structures in the field, he talked rapidly of how his neighbors guessed he would do in Congress, but would not make much of a fist at farming, and then called my attention to his corn and buckwheat and other crops, and said that was a marsh, but he underdrained it with tile, and found spring-water flowing out of the bluff, and found he could get a five-foot fall, and with pumps of a given dimension, a water-dam could throw water back eighty rods to his house, and eighty feet above it. 'But,' said he, in his jocularly, impressive manner, 'I did my surveying before I did my work.'"

This is certainly a pleasant picture of a great man, who has not lost his simplicity of manner, and who seems unconscious of his greatness—in whom the love of humanity is so strong that he reaches out a cordial hand to all of his kind, no matter how humble, and shows the warmest interest in all.

Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, was among the speakers at the memorial meeting in Terre Haute, and in the course of his remarks, said: "I knew James A. Garfield well, and, except on the political field, we had strong sympathies together. It is nearly eighteen years since we first met, and during that period I had the honor to serve seven years in the House of Representatives with him.

"The kindness of his nature and his mental activity were his leading traits. In all his intercourse with men, women, and children, no kinder heart ever beat in human breast than that which struggled on till 10.30 o'clock Monday night, and then forever stood still. There was a light in his face, a chord in his voice, and a pressure in his hand, which were full of love for his fellow-beings. His manners were ardent and demonstrative with those to whom he was attached, and he filled the private circle with sunshine and magnetic currents. He had the joyous spirits of boyhood and the robust intellectuality of manhood more perfectly combined than any other I ever knew. Such a character was necessarily almost irresistible with those who knew him personally, and it accounts for that undying hold which, under all circumstances, bound his immediate constituents to him as with hooks of steel. Such a nature, however, always has its dangers as well as its strength and its blessings. The kind heart and the open hand never accompany a suspicious, distrustful mind. Designing men mark such a character for their own selfishness, and Gen. Garfield's faults—for he had faults, as he was human—sprang more from this circumstance than from all others combined. He was prompt and eager to respond to the wishes of those he esteemed his friends, whether inside or outside of his own political party. That he made some mistakes in his long, busy career is but repeating the history of every generous and obliging man who has lived and died in public life. They are not such, however, as are recorded in heaven, nor will they mar or weaken the love of his countrymen.

"The poor, laboring boy, the self-made man, the hopeful, buoyant soul in the face of all difficulties and odds, constitute an example for the American youth, which will never be lost nor grow dim.

"The estimate to be placed on the intellectual abilities of Gen. Garfield must be a very high one. Nature was bountiful to him, and his acquirements were extensive and solid. If I might make a comparison, I would say that, with the exception of Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, he was the most learned President in what is written in books in the whole range of American history.

"The Christian character of Gen. Garfield can not, with propriety, be omitted in a glance, however brief, at his remarkable career. Those who knew him best in the midst of his ambition and his worldly hopes will not fail now at his tomb to bear their testimony to his faith in God and his love for the teachings of the blessed Nazarene.

"It seems but yesterday that I saw him last, and parted from him in all the glory of his physical and mental manhood. His eye was full of light, his tread elastic and strong, and the world lay bright before him. He talked freely of public men and public affairs. His resentments were like sparks from the flint. He cherished them not for a moment. Speaking of one who, he thought, had wronged him, he said to me, that, sooner or later, he intended to pour coals of fire on his head by acts of kindness to some of his kindred. He did not live to do so, but the purpose of his heart has been placed to his credit in the book of eternal life"

A correspondent of the New York Tribune suggests that the following lines, from Pollok's "Course of Time," apply with remarkable fitness to his glorious career: