Men, like books, have their beginnings. James Abram Garfield was born on the 19th day of November, 1831. His first outlook upon things was from a cabin door in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The building was of rough logs, with mud between the cracks, to keep out the winter cold. The single room had a puncheon floor, and on one side a large fire-place, with a blackened crane for cooking purposes. In winter evenings, a vast pile of blazing logs in this fire-place filled the cabin with a cheerful warmth and ruddy glow. Overhead, from the rude rafters, hung rows of well-cured hams, and around the mud chimney were long strings of red-pepper pods and dried pumpkins. The furniture was as primitive as the apartment. A puncheon table, a clumsy cupboard, a couple of large bedsteads, made by driving stakes in the floor, some blocks for seats, and a well-kept gun, almost complete the catalogue. The windows had greased paper instead of glass; and, in rough weather, were kept constantly closed with heavy shutters.

Stepping out of doors, one would see that the cabin stood on the edge of a small clearing of some twenty acres. On the south, at a little distance, stood a solid log barn, differing from the house only in having open cracks. The barn-yard had a worm fence around it, and contained a heavy ox-wagon and a feeding-trough for hogs. Skirting the clearing on all sides was the forest primeval, which, on the 19th of November, the frost had already transfigured with gold and scarlet splendors. Cold winds whistled through the branches, and thick showers of dry leaves fell rustling to the ground.

Already the cabin shutters were closed for the winter; already the cattle munched straw and fodder at the barn, instead of roaming through the forest for tender grass and juicy leaves; already a huge wood-pile appeared by the cabin door. The whole place had that sealed-up look which betokens the approach of winter at the farm-house. The sun rose late, hung low in the sky at high noon; and, after feeble effort, sunk early behind the western forest. Well for the brave pioneers is it, if they are ready for a long and bitter struggle with the winter.

So much for the home. But what of the family? Who and what are they? As the babe sleeps in its mother’s arms, what prophecy of its destiny is there written in the red pages of the blood ancestral?

In America, the Southern States have been the land of splendid hospitality, chivalric manners, and aristocratic lineage; the West the land of courage, enterprise, and practical executive ability; but the New England States have been preëminently the home of intellectual genius and moral heroism. From New England came both the father and mother of James A. Garfield, and it means much. But there are reasons for looking at his ancestry more closely.

The law of heredity has long been suspected, and, in late years, has been, to a considerable extent, regarded as the demonstrated and universal order of nature. It is the law by which the offspring inherits the qualities and characteristics of its ancestors. It makes the oak the same sort of a tree as the parent, from which the seed acorn fell. It makes a tree, which sprang from the seed of a large peach, yield downy fruit as large and luscious as the juicy ancestor. It says that every thing shall produce after its kind; that small radishes shall come from the seed of small radishes, and a richly perfumed geranium from the slip cut from one of that kind. It says that, other things being equal, the descendants of a fast horse shall be fast, and the posterity of a plug shall be plugs. It says that a Jersey cow, with thin ears, straight back, and copious yield of rich milk, shall have children like unto herself. But a man has many more qualities and possibilities than a vegetable or a brute. He has an infinitely wider range, through which his characteristics may run. The color of his hair, his size, his strength, are but the smallest part of his inheritance. He inherits also the size and texture of his brain, the shape of his skull, and the skill of his hands. It is among his ancestry that must be sought the reason and source of his powers. It is there that is largely determined the question of his capacity for ideas, and it is from his ancestry that a man should form his ideas of his capacity. It is there that are largely settled the matters of his tastes and temper, of his ambitions and his powers. The question of whether he shall be a mechanic, a tradesman, or a lawyer, is already settled before he gets a chance at the problem.

The old myth about the gods holding a council at the birth of every mortal, and determining his destiny, has some truth in it. In one respect it is wrong. The council of the gods is held years before his birth; it has been in session all the time. If a man has musical skill, he gets it from his ancestry. It is the same with an inventor, or an artist, or a scholar, or a preacher. This looks like the law of fate. It is not. It is the fate of law.

But this is not all of the law of inheritance. Men have an inherited moral nature, as well as an intellectual one. Drunkenness, sensuality, laziness, extravagance, and pauperism, are handed down from father to son. Appetites are inherited, and so are habits. On the other hand, courage, energy, self-denial, the power of work, are also transmitted and inherited. If a man’s ancestry were thieves, it will not do to trust him. If they were bold, true, honest men and women, it will do to rely upon him.

In late years, this law of inheritance has been much studied by scientists. The general law is about as has been stated; but it has innumerable offsets and qualifications which are not understood. Sometimes a child is a compound of the qualities of both parents. More frequently the son resembles the mother, and the daughter the father. Sometimes the child resembles neither parent, but seems to inherit every thing from an uncle or aunt. Often the resemblance to the grand-parent is the most marked. That these complications are governed by fixed, though, at present, unknown laws, can not be doubted; but for the purposes of biography the question is unessential.

Scientists say that nine-tenths of a man’s genius is hereditary, and one-tenth accidental. The inherited portion may appear large, but it is to be remembered that only possibilities are inherited, and that not one man in a million reaches the limit of his possibilities. If the lives of the ancestors of James A. Garfield were studied, we could tell what his possibilities were; while, by studying the life of Garfield himself, we see how nearly he realized those possibilities. This is the reason why biography interests itself in a man’s ancestors. They furnish the key to the situation.

Of the many classes of colonists who settled this continent, by far the most illustrious were the Puritans and the Huguenots. Their names, alike invented as epithets of contempt and derision, have become the brightest on the historic page. Their fame rests upon their sacrifices. Not for gold, nor adventure, nor discovery, did they seek the forest-wrapped continent of North America, but for the sake of worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Different in nationality, language, and temperament—the one from the foggy isle of England, the other from the sunny skies of France—they alike fled from religious persecution; the Puritan from that intolerance and bigotry which cost Charles I. his head and revolutionized the English monarchy; the Huguenot from the withdrawal of the last vestige of religious liberty by Louis XIV. The proudest lineage which an American can trace is to one or the other of these communities of exiles.—In James A. Garfield these two currents of noble and heroic blood met and mingled.

The first ancestor, by the name of Garfield, of whom the family have any record, is Edward Garfield, a Puritan, who, for the sake of conscience, in 1636, left his home near the boundary line of England and Wales, and joined the colony of the distinguished John Winthrop, at Watertown, Massachusetts. He appears to have been a plain farmer, of deep, religious convictions, and much respected by the community in which he lived. Of his ancestry, only two facts are known. One is that no book of the peerage or list of English nobility ever contained the name of Garfield. The other is that, at some time in the past, possibly during the Crusades, the family had received, or adopted, a coat of arms. The device was a golden shield crossed by three crimson bars; in one corner a cross; in another a heart; above the shield an arm and hand grasping a sword. A Latin motto, “In cruce vinco,”—“In the cross I conquer,”—completed the emblem. It is probable that the family had been soldiers, not unlikely in a religious war. The wife of Edward Garfield was a fair-haired girl from Germany.—To the brave heart and earnest temper of the Welshman, was added the persistence and reflectiveness of the German mind. Of their immediate descendants, but little can be told. Like the ancestor they were

But they were honest and respected citizens—tillers of the soil—not infrequently holding some local position as selectman or captain of militia. Five of the lineal descendants are said to sleep in the beautiful cemetery in Watertown, “careless alike of sunshine and of storm.”

Tracing the family history down to the stirring and memorable period of the American Revolution, the name which has now become historic emerges from obscurity. The spirit of Puritanism, which had braved the rigors of life in the colonies rather than abate one jot of its intellectual liberty, nourished by hardship and strengthened by misfortune, had been handed down by the law of inheritance through eight peaceful generations. It was the spirit which resented oppression, demanded liberty, and fought for principle till the last dollar was spent, and the last drop of blood was shed in her cause.

We might have calculated on the descendants of the Puritan colonist being in the front of battle from the very outbreak of the War for Independence. It was so. They were there. They were the kind of men to be there. Abraham Garfield, great-uncle of the President, took part in the first real battle of the Revolution, the fight at Concord Bridge, which fixed the status of the Colonies as that of rebellion. On the fourth day after the bloodletting the following affidavit was drawn up and sworn to before a magistrate:

“We, John Hoar, John Whithead, Abraham Garfield, Benjamin Munroe, Isaac Parker, William Hosmer, John Adams, Gregory Stone, all of Lincoln, in the County of Middlesex, Massachusetts Bay, all of lawful age, do testify and say, that on Wednesday last, we were assembled at Concord, in the morning of said day, in consequence of information received that a brigade of regular troops were on their march to the said town of Concord, who had killed six men at the town of Lexington. About an hour afterwards we saw them approaching, to the number, as we apprehended, of about 1,200, on which we retreated to a hill about eighty rods back, and the said troops then took possession of the hill where we were first posted. Presently after this we saw the troops moving toward the North Bridge, about one mile from the said Concord meeting-house; we then immediately went before them and passed the bridge, just before a party of them, to the number of about two hundred, arrived; they there left about one-half of their two hundred at the bridge, and proceeded with the rest toward Col. Barrett’s, about two miles from the said bridge; and the troops that were stationed there, observing our approach, marched back over the bridge and then took up some of the planks; we then hastened our march toward the bridge, and when we had got near the bridge they fired on our men, first three guns, one after the other, and then a considerable number more; and then, and not before (having orders from our commanding officers not to fire till we were fired upon), we fired upon the regulars and they retreated. On their retreat through the town of Lexington to Charlestown, they ravaged and destroyed private property, and burnt three houses, one barn, and one shop.”

The act of signature to that paper was one of the sublimest courage. It identified the leaders of the fight; it admitted and justified the act of firing on the troops of the government! It seemed almost equal to putting the executioner’s noose around their necks. But to such men, life was a feather-weight compared to principle. If the Colonies were to be roused to rebellion and revolution, the truth of that fight at Concord bridge had to be laid before the people, accompanied by proofs that could not be questioned. The patriots not only did the deed but shouldered the responsibility. Of the signers with Abraham Garfield, John Hoar was the great-grandfather of Senator George F. Hoar, presiding officer of the convention which nominated James A. Garfield for the Presidency.

Solomon Garfield, brother of Abraham, and great-grandfather of the subject of this history, had married Sarah Stimpson in 1766, and was living at Weston, Massachusetts, when the war broke out. Little is known of him except that he was a soldier of the Revolution, and came out of the war alive, but impoverished by the loss of his property. He soon moved to Otsego County, New York, where one of his sons, Thomas Garfield, married. It was on the latter’s farm, in December, 1799, that was born Abram Garfield, the ninth lineal descendant of the Puritan, and father of the man whose name and fame are henceforth the heritage of all mankind. Two years after the birth of Abram, his father died suddenly and tragically, leaving his young widow and several children in most adverse circumstances. When about twelve years old, Abram, a stout sun-burnt little fellow, fell in with a playmate two years younger than himself, named Eliza Ballou, also a widow’s child whose mother had recently moved to Worcester, Otsego County, New York, where the Garfields were living. In that childhood friendship lay the germ of a romantic love, of which the fruit was to be more important to men and to history than that of the most splendid nuptials ever negotiated in the courts of kings.

James Ballou, Eliza’s older brother, impatient of the wretched poverty in which they dwelt, persuaded his mother to emigrate to Ohio. The emigrant wagon, with its jaded horses, its muddy white cover, its much jostled load of household articles, and its sad-eyed and forlorn occupants! How the picture rises before the eyes! What a history it tells of poverty and misfortune; of disappointment and hardship; of a wretched home left behind, yet dear to memory because left behind; of a still harder life ahead in the western wilderness toward which it wends its weary way! More showy equipages there have been. The Roman chariot, the English stage-coach, and the palace railway train, have each been taken up and embalmed in literature. But the emigrant wagon, richer in association, closer to the heart-throb, more familiar with tears than smiles, has found no poet who would stoop to the lowly theme. In a few years the emigrant wagon will be a thing of the past, and forgotten; but though we bid it farewell forever, let it have a high place in the American heart and history, as the precursor of our cities and our civilization.

Thus the boy and girl were separated. Abram Garfield was brought up as a “bound boy” by a farmer named Stone. While he was filling the place of chore boy on the New York farm, Eliza Ballou, having something more than an ordinary education, taught a summer school in the Ohio wilderness. It is said that one day, in a terrific storm, a red bolt of lightning shot through the cabin roof, smiting teacher and scholars to the floor, thus breaking up the school. The spirit of tragedy seems to have hovered over her entire life.

Love laughs at difficulties and delays, and in a few years after the Ballou emigration, Abram Garfield, a “stalwart” of the earlier and better kind, tramped his muddy way along the same roads, across the same rivers, and—strange, was it not?—to the very cabin where the emigrant wagon had stopped. Swift flew the shining days of courtship; and Eliza Ballou became Eliza Ballou Garfield, the mother of the President.

Eliza Ballou was a lineal descendant of Maturin Ballou, a French Huguenot, who, about the year 1685, upon the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, fled from the smiling vineyards of France to the rugged but liberty-giving land of America. Joining the colony of Roger Williams, at Cumberland, Rhode Island, which had adopted for its principle “In civil matters, law; in religious matters, liberty,” he built a queer old church, from the pulpit of which he thundered forth his philippics against religious intolerance. The building still stands, and is a curiosity of architecture. Not a nail was used in its construction. For generation after generation the descendants of this man were eloquent preachers, occupying the very pulpit of their ancestor. Their names are famous. They were men of powerful intellects, thorough culture, and splendid characters. Their posterity has enriched this country with many distinguished lawyers, soldiers, and politicians. They were a superior family from the first, uniting to brilliant minds a spotless integrity, an indomitable energy, and the burning and eloquent gifts of the orator. The best known member of the family is Rev. Hosea Ballou, the founder of the Universalist Church in America, of whom Eliza Ballou was a grand-niece. He was a man of wide intellectual activity, a prolific and powerful writer, and made a marked impress on the thought of his generation.

From this brief view of the ancestry of James A. Garfield, it is easy to see that there was the hereditary preparation for a great man. From the father’s side came great physical power, large bones, big muscles, and an immense brain. From the father’s line also came the heritage of profound conviction, of a lofty and resistless courage, which was ready anywhere to do and die for the truth, and of the exhaustless patience which was the product of ten generations of tilling the soil. On the other hand, the Ballous were small of stature, of brilliant and imaginative minds, of impetuous and energetic temperament, of the finest grain, physically and mentally. They were scholars; people of books and culture, and, above all, they were orators. From them, albeit, came the intellectual equipment of their illustrious descendant. From the mother, Garfield inherited the love of books, the capacity for ideas, the eloquent tongue, and the tireless energy. To the earnest solidity and love of liberty of the Welshman, Edward Garfield, mixed with the reflective thought of the fair-haired German wife, was added the characteristic clearness and vivacity of the French mind.

The trend of Garfield’s mind could not have been other than deeply religious. The Ballous, for ten generations, had been preachers. No man could combine in himself the Puritan and Huguenot without being a true worshiper of God. On the other hand, while Puritans and Huguenots were at first religious sects, their struggles were with the civil power; so that each of them in time became the representative of the deepest political life of their respective nationalities. Through both father and mother, therefore, came a genius for politics and affairs of state; the conservatism of the sturdy Briton being quickened by the radicalism, the genius for reform which belongs to the mercurial Frenchman. From both parents would also come a liberality and breadth of mind, which distinguishes only a few great historic characters. The large, slow moving, good natured Garfields were by temperament far removed from bigotry; while the near ancestor of the mother had been excommunicated from the Baptist Church, because he thought God was merciful enough to save all mankind from the flames of ultimate perdition.

In Garfield’s ancestry there was also a vein of military genius. The coat of arms, the militia captaincy of Benjamin Garfield, the affidavit of Abraham at Concord bridge, are the outcroppings on the father’s side. The mother was a near relative of General Rufus Ingalls; and her brother, for whom the President was named, was a brave soldier in the war of 1812.

These, then, are some of the prophecies which had been spoken of the child that was born in the Garfield cabin in the fall of 1831. Future biographers will, perhaps, make more extended investigations, but we have seen something, in the language of the dead hero himself, “of those latent forces infolded in the spirit of the new-born child; forces that may date back centuries and find their origin in the life and thoughts and deeds of remote ancestors; forces, the germs of which, enveloped in the awful mystery of life, have been transmitted silently from generation to generation, and never perish.” As we pursue his history we will see these various forces cropping out in his career; at one time the scholar, at another, the preacher; at others, the soldier, the orator, or the statesman, but always, always the man.

For two years after the birth of their youngest child James, the lives of Abram and Eliza Garfield flowed on peacefully and hopefully enough. The children were growing; the little farm improving; new settlers were coming in daily; and there began to be much expected from the new system of internal improvements. With happy and not unhopeful hearts they looked forward to a future of comfortable prosperity. But close by the cradle gapes the grave. Every fireside has its tragedy. In one short hour this happy, peaceful life had fled. The fire fiend thrust his torch into the dry forests of north-western Ohio, in the region of the Garfield home. In an instant, the evening sky was red with flame. It was a moment of horror. Sweeping on through the blazing tree-tops with the speed of the wind came the tornado of fire. Destruction seemed at hand, not only of crops and fences, but of barns, houses, stock, and of the people themselves. In this emergency, the neighbors for miles around gathered under the lead of Abram Garfield to battle for all that was near and dear. A plan of work was swiftly formed. Hour after hour they toiled with superhuman effort. Choked and blinded by volumes of smoke, with scorched hands and singed brows, they fought the flames hand to hand till, at last, the current of death was turned aside. The little neighborhood of settlers was saved. But the terrific exertions put forth by Abram Garfield had exhausted him beyond the reach of recuperation. Returning home, from the night of toil, and incautiously exposing himself, he was attacked with congestion of the lungs. Every effort to relieve the sufferer was made by the devoted wife. Every means known to her was used to rally the exhausted vitality, but in vain. Chill followed chill. The vital powers were exhausted, and the life-tide ebbed fast away. In a few hours the rustle of black wings was heard in that lowly home in the wilderness. Calling his young wife to him he whispered, “Eliza, you will soon be alone. We have planted four saplings here in these woods; I leave them to your care.” One last embrace from the grief-stricken wife and children; one more look through the open door at the little clearing and the circling forest, over which the setting sun was throwing its latest rays, and the heroic spirit had departed. Little by little the darkness of the night without came in and mingled with the darkness of the night within.

Though stunned by this appalling calamity, Eliza Ballou Garfield, true to the heroic ancestry from which she sprung, took up the burden of life with invincible courage. The prospect was a hard one. Of the four children, the oldest, Thomas, was ten years of age; the two little girls ranged at seven and four, and the blue-eyed baby, James, had seen only twenty months. On the other hand, the widow’s resources were scanty indeed. The little farm was only begun. To make a farm in a timber country is a life task for the stoutest man. Years and years of arduous toil would be required to fell the timber, burn the stumps, grub out the roots, and fence the fields before it could really be a farm. Worse than this, the place was mortgaged. The little clearing of twenty acres, with the imperfect cultivation which one weak woman, unaided, could give it, had to be depended on, not only to furnish food for herself and the four children, but to pay taxes and interest on the mortgage, and gradually to lessen the principal of the debt itself. The pioneer population of the country was as poor as herself, hardly able to raise sufficient grain for bread, and reduced almost to starvation by the failure of a single crop.

So fearful were the odds against the plucky little widow that her friends pointed out the overwhelming difficulties of the situation, and earnestly advised her to let her children be distributed among the neighbors for bringing up. Firmly but kindly she put aside their well-meant efforts. With invincible courage and an iron will, she said: “My family must not be separated. It is my wish and duty to raise these children myself. No one can care for them like a mother.” It is from such a mother that great men are born. She lost no time in irresolution, but plunged at once into the roughest sort of men’s labor. The wheat-field was only half fenced; the precious harvest which was to be their sustenance through the winter was still ungathered, and would be destroyed by roving cattle, which had been turned loose during the forest fires. The emergency had to be met, and she met it. Finding in the woods some trees, fresh fallen beneath her husband’s glittering ax, she commenced the hard work of splitting rails. At first she succeeded poorly; her hands became blistered, her arms sore, and her heart sick. But with practice she improved. Her small arms learned to swing the maul with a steady stroke. Day by day the worm fence crawled around the wheat field, until the ends met.

The highest heroism is not that which manifests itself in some single great and splendid crisis. It is not found on the battle-field where regiments dash forward upon blazing batteries, and in ten minutes are either conquerors or corpses. It is not seen at the stake of martyrdom, where, for the sake of opinion, men for a few moments endure the unimaginable tortures of the flames. It is not found in the courtly tournaments of the past, where knights, in glittering armor, flung the furious lance of defiance into the face of their foe. Splendid, heroic, are these all. But there is a heroism grander still; it is the heroism which endures, not merely for a moment, but through the hard and bitter toils of a life-time; which, when the inspiration of the crisis has passed away, and weary years of hardship stretch their stony path before tired feet, cheerfully takes up the burden of life, undaunted and undismayed. In all the annals of the brave, who, in all times, have suffered and endured, there is no scene more touching than the picture of this widow toiling for her children.

The annals of this period of life in the Garfield cabin are simple. But biography, when it has for its theme one of the loftiest men that ever lived, loves to busy itself with the details of his childhood and to try to trace in them the indications of future greatness. The picture of that life has been given by the dauntless woman herself. In the spring of the year, the little corn patch was broken up with an old-fashioned wooden plow with an iron share. At first the ox-team was mostly driven by the widow herself, but Tom, the oldest boy, soon learned to divide the labor. The baby was left with his older sister, while the mother and older son worked at the plow, or dragged a heavy tree branch—a primitive harrow—over the clods. When the seed was to be put in, it was by the same hands. The garden, with its precious store of potatoes, beans, and cabbages, came in for no small share of attention, for these were the luxuries of the frugal table. From the first Tom was able largely to attend to the few head of stock on the little place. When a hog was to be killed for curing, some neighbor was given a share to perform the act of slaughter. The mysteries of smoking and curing the various parts were well understood by Mrs. Garfield. At harvest, also, the neighbors would lend a hand, the men helping in the field, and the women at the cabin preparing dinner. Of butter, milk, and eggs, the children always had a good supply, even if the table was in other respects meager. There was a little orchard, planted by the father, which thrived immensely. In a year or two the trees were laden with rosy fruit. Cherries, plums, and apples peeped out from their leafy homes. The gathering was the children’s job, and they made it a merry one.

From the first the Garfield children performed tasks beyond their years. Corn-planting, weed-pulling, potato-digging, and the countless jobs which have to be performed on every farm, were shared by them. The first winter was one of the bitterest privation. The supplies were so scanty that the mother, unobserved by the four hungry little folks, would often give her share of the meal to them. But after the first winter, the bitter edge of poverty wore off. The executive ability of the little widow began to tell on the family affairs. In the following spring, the mortgage on the place was canceled by selling off fifty of the eighty acres. In the absence of money, the mother made exchanges of work—sewing for groceries, spinning for cotton, and washing for shoes. In time, too, the children came to be a valuable help.

But though this life was busy and a hard one, it was not all that occupied the attention of the family. The Garfield cabin had an inner life; a life of thought and love as well as of economy and work. Mrs. Garfield had a head for books as well as business. Her husband and herself had been members of the Church of the Disciples, followers of Alexander Campbell. In her widowhood, for years she and her children never missed a sabbath in attending the church three miles away. If ever there was an earnest, honest Christian, Eliza Garfield was one. A short, cheerful prayer each morning, no matter how early she and the children rose, a word of thankfulness at the beginning of every meal, no matter how meager, and a thoughtful, quiet Bible-reading and prayer at night, formed part of that cabin life. Feeling keenly the poor advantages of the children in the way of education, she told them much of history and the world, and thus around her knee they learned from the loving teacher lessons not taught in any college. When James was five years old, his older sister for awhile carried him on her back to the log school-house, a mile and a half distant, at a place dignified with the name of a village, though it contained only a store, blacksmith shop, and the school. But the school was too far away. The enterprise of Mrs. Garfield was nowhere better shown than in her offering the land, and securing a school-house on her own farm. She was determined on her children having the best education the wilderness afforded, and they had it.

But the four children were strangely different. They had the same ancestry, and the same surroundings. Who could have foretold the wide difference of their destinies? The girls were cheerful, industrious, and loving. They were fair scholars at the country school, and were much thought of in the neighborhood. At a very early age they took from the tired mother’s shoulders a large share of the work of the little household. They carded, spun, wove, and mended the boys’ clothes when they were but children themselves. They beautified the rough little home, and added a cheery joy to its plain surroundings. They were superior to the little society in which they mingled, but not above it. There were apple-parings, corn-huskings, quilting-bees, apple-butter and maple-sugar boilings, in which they were the ringleaders of mischief—romping, cheerful, healthy girls, happy in spite of adversity, ambitious only to make good wives and mothers.

Thomas, the elder brother, was a Garfield out and out. He was a plodding, self-denying, quiet boy, with the tenderest love for his mother, and without an ambition beyond a farmer’s life. When the other children went to school, he staid at home “to work,” he said, “so that the girls and James might get an education.” For himself he “would do without it.” Wise, thoughtful, and patient, he was the fit successor of the generations of Garfields who had held the plow-handle before he was born. Without a complaint, of his own will he worked year after year, denying himself every thing that could help his brother James to education and an ambitious manhood. For from the first, mother and children felt that in the youngest son lay the hope of the family.

James took precociously to books, learning to read early, and knowing the English reader almost by heart at eight years of age. His first experience at the school built on the home farm is worth noting. The seats were hard, the scene new and exciting, and his stout little frame tingled with restrained energy. He squirmed, twisted, writhed, peeped under the seats and over his shoulder; tied his legs in a knot, then untied them; hung his head backwards till the blood almost burst forth, and in a thousand ways manifested his restlessness. Reproofs did no good. At last the well-meaning teacher told James’s mother that nothing could be made of the boy. With tears in her eyes the fond, ambitious mother talked to the little fellow that night in the fire-light. The victory was a triumph of love. The boy returned to school, still restless, but studious as well. At the end of the term he received a copy of the New Testament as a prize for being the best reader in the school. The restlessness, above mentioned, seems to have followed him through life. Sleeping with his brother he would kick the cover off at night, and then say, “Thomas, cover me up.” A military friend relates that, during the civil war, after a day of terrible bloodshed, lying with a distinguished officer, the cover came off in the old way, and he murmured in his sleep, “Thomas, cover me up.” Wakened by the sound of his own voice, he became aware of what he had said; and then, thinking of the old cabin life, and the obscure but tender-hearted brother, General Garfield burst into tears, and wept himself to sleep.

The influences surrounding the first ten or twelve years of life are apt to be underestimated. But it can not be doubted that the lessons of child-life learned in the cabin and on the little farm had more to do with Garfield’s future greatness than all his subsequent education. Like each of his parents, he was left without a father at the age of two years. If any one class of men have more universally risen to prominence than another it has been widow’s sons. The high sense of responsibility, the habits of economy and toil, are a priceless experience. None is to be pitied more than the child of luxury and fortune, and no one suspects his disadvantages less. Hated poverty is, after all, the nursery of greatness. The discipline which would have crushed a weak soul only served to strengthen the rugged and vigorous nature of this boy.

The stories which come down to us of Garfield’s childhood, though not remarkable, show that he was different from the boys around him. He had a restless, aspiring mind, fond of strong food. Every hint of the outside world fascinated him, and roused the most pertinacious curiosity. Yet to this wide-eyed interest in what lay outside of his life this shock-haired, bare-legged boy added an indomitable zeal for work. From dawn to dark he toiled; but whether chopping wood, working in the field or at the barn, it was always with the idea and inspiration that he was “helping mother.” Glorious loyalty of boyhood!

CHAPTER II.
THE STRUGGLE OF BOYHOOD.

Socrates.—Alcibiades, what sayest thou that is, passing between us and yon wall?

Alcibiades.—I should call it a thing; some call it a boy.

Soc.—Nay, I call it neither a thing nor a boy, but rather a young man. By Hercules, if I should go further, I should say that that being is a god in embryo!

Alc.—You are my master, Socrates, or I should say that nature would have hard work to hatch a god out of such an object.

Soc.—Most men are fools, Alcibiades, because they are unable to discover in the germ, or even in the growing stalk, the vast possibilities of development. They forget the beauty of growth; and, therefore, they reckon not that nature and discipline are able to make yon boy as one of the immortals.

So the child James Garfield advanced into the golden age of boyhood. This period we will now briefly live over after him. Spring time deepens into early summer; the branches and the leaves are swollen with life’s young sap; what manner of fruit will this growing tree offer the creative sun to work upon?

The young lad, in whom our interest centers, was now, in the autumn of 1843, twelve years old, when something new came into his life, and gave to him his first definite and well-fixed purpose. He had always, and by nature, been industrious. In that little farm home, where poverty strove continually to carry the day against the combined forces of industry and economy, no service was without its value. And, therefore, it had doubtless been a delight to all in that narrow circle to observe in James the qualities of a good worker. He seemed a true child of that wonderful western country which is yet so young, and so able to turn its energies to advantage in every available way. So, while still too young to “make a hand” at anything, James had found his place wherever there was demand for such light duties as he was able to perform. At field, barn or cabin, in garden or in kitchen, place there was none where the little fellow’s powers were not exercised. Instinct with forces larger than his frame, development of them was inevitable.

But now a great event in the family took place. Thomas, who had just attained his majority, had returned from a trip to Michigan with a sum of ready money, and wanted to build his mother a new house. Life in the cabin had, in his estimation, been endured long enough. Some of the materials for a frame building were already accumulated, and under the directions of a carpenter the work was begun and rapidly pushed to completion. In all these proceedings James took an intense interest, and developed such a liking for tools and timber as could but signify a member of the Builders’ Guild. He resolved to be a carpenter; and from this day on was never for a moment without an object in life.

The ambition to “be something” took many different turns, but was a force which, once created, could never be put down. The care and skill requisite to putting a house together, fitting the rafters into place, and joining part to part with mathematical precision, gave him an idea that these things were of a higher order than farm labor. Plain digging would no longer do; there must be a better chance to contrive something, to conjure up plans and ways and means in the brain, and show forth ideas by the skill of the hand. Consequently a variety of tools began to accumulate about James Garfield. There was a corner somewhere which, in imitation of the great carpenter who built their house, he called his “shop;” a rough bench, perhaps, with a few planes, and mallets, and chisels, and saws, and the like, to help in mending the gates and doors about the place. No independent farm can get along without such help, and of course these services were in constant demand.

The dexterity thus acquired soon led to earnings abroad. The first money Garfield ever received in this way was one dollar, which the village carpenter paid him for planing a hundred boards at a cent apiece. His active and earnest performance of every duty brought him plenty of offers, and between the ages of twelve and fifteen years he helped to put up a number of buildings in that district of country, some of which are standing to this day.

Thus this young life passed away the precious time of the early teens. Work and study; study and work. Hands and feet, marrow and muscle, all steadily engaged in the rugged discipline of labor, battling with nature for subsistence. But time rolls on; childhood fast recedes from that glory from the other side which fringes the dawn; and, as we move on, every rising sun wakes up a new idea. While our young friend gave his attention and strength to industry, his imagination began to live in a new world. He had been to school, and still went a few months each year; and the following incident will indicate what a good-hearted, bright school-boy he was. There was a spelling-match in the little log school-house, in which James, who was thirteen years old, took part. The teacher told the scholars that if they whispered she would send them home. The lad standing next to James got confused, and to help him James told him how to spell the word. The teacher saw this, and said: “James, you know the rule; you must go home.” James picked up his cap and left. In a very few seconds he returned and took his place in the class. “Why, how is this, James? I told you to go home,” said his teacher. “I know it, and I went home,” said James.

But the log school-house, with its mystery of the three R’s, was not sufficient. James was one of the boys who are born to the love of books. Whatever had an intelligent aspect, whatever thing had the color and glow of an idea, was by nature attractive to his mind, and this he sought with eagerness and zeal. Therefore, even before the boy could read, his mother had read to him; and afterwards winter evening and leisure summer hour alike went swiftly by. The scholar in him hungered for the scholar’s meat and drink; which means books, and books, and never enough of them.