to his crippled chum was very noticeable. The pair in their daily walks to and from the recitation-rooms and about the college grounds excited the eager gaze and curiosity of their fellow-students, from their quaint and odd appearance and evident unfamiliarity with college ways and doings.

"Besides, the contrast in the appearance of the couple was very striking-Garfield of large frame, looming up six feet high, strong and healthy, and looking like a backwoodsman, and Wilbur, with a pale, intellectual cast of countenance limping along beside him..

"They made no attempt to conform to the ways and peculiarities of college life, or to ingratiate themselves with the students. They both seemed to be in dead earnest, striving to get an education, and to be entirely engrossed in their studies and college duties..

"Their position at first was a very isolated and peculiar one, and which was somewhat enhanced by a whisper that soon circulated among the students that they were Campbellites. Now, what that meant, or what tenets the sect held, nobody seemed to know, but it was supposed to mean something very awful. But they continued on pursuing the even tenor of their way, unmoved by the stares and criticisms of their companions. After a tíme this feeling passed away, and Garfield, by his successful attainments and straightforward, manly course, commanded the respect and admiration of his class and of the whole college.'

Rev. E. N. Manley says: "We used to have an annual holiday called "Mountain-Day." At the close of one, a Fourth of July evening, on the summit of old "Greylock," seven miles from college, there was a goodly gathering of students about their campfire, when Garfield, the recognized leader, taking a copy of the New Testament from his pocket, said, "Boys, I am accustomed to read a chapter with my absent mother every night; shall I read aloud?" All assenting, he read us the chapter his mother in Ohio was then reading, and called on a classmate to pray.

"I think it was at the breaking-up meeting of the class, at graduation, that, being called up for a speech, he said, 'yar is a Greek preposition meaning for. Gar-field, forthe-field. That is what I suppose I am.""

A single sentence, from the letter of Mr. C. H. Hill, reveals most vividly a quality of his mind which shone with great brilliancy throughout his public life: "I remember distinctly that he was, when he came to college, a fervent supporter of an elective judiciary, but in preparing himself to take part in a debate on that subject, he studied himself over to the opposite side of the question, and began his speech by frankly admitting that he had within a week entirely changed his opinions on the subject."

Such statements as are contained in the foregoing letters could be multiplied many times but it would only be to repeat the same sentiments. These letters were mostly written in 1880, and years after their authors sat together with Garfield in the college recitation rooms.

They are the distinct memories and the matured judgments of men who would be the last to bow before any fictitious or unworthily won success. They were a class of men who knew him well and whom he regarded with ever increasing friendship and love. They realized what he so well expressed in 1853: "To my mind the whole catalogue of fashionable friendships and polite intimacies are not worth one honest tear of sympathy or one heartfelt emotion of true friendship. Unless I can enter the inner chambers of the soul and read the inscription there upon those everduring tablets, and thus become acquainted with the inner life, and know the inner man, I care not for intercourse, for nothing else is true friendship."

His classmates indeed entered the "inner chambers of his soul" and spoke their words of truth and soberness of what they found there.

In speaking to his classmates on the evening before his inauguration as President he revealed himself to them in these felicitous words:

"CLASSMATES-To me there is something exceedingly pathetic in this reunion. In every eye before me I see the light of friendship and love, and I am sure it is reflected back to each one of you from my inmost heart. For twenty-two years, with the exception of the last few days, I have been in the public service. To-night I am a private citizen. To-morrow I shall be called upon to assume new responsibilities, and on the day after the broadside of the world's wrath will strike. It will strike hard. I know it, and you will know it. Whatever may happen to me in the future, I shall feel that I can always fall back upon the shoulders and hearts of the class of '56 for their approval of that which is right, and for their charitable judgment wherein I may come short in the discharge of my public duties. You may write down in your books now the largest percentage of blunders which you think I will be likely to make, and you will be sure to find in the end that I have made more than you have calculated-many more.

"This honor comes to me unsought. I have never had the presidential fever-not even for a day; nor have I it to-night. I have no feeling of elation in view of the position I am called upon to fill. I would thank God were I to-day a free lance in the House or the Senate. But it is not to be, and I will go forward to meet the responsibilities and discharge the duties that are before me with all the firmness and ability I can command. I hope you will be able conscientiously to approve my conduct, and when I return to private life I wish you to give me another classmeeting.

In 1856 Mr. Garfield graduated from Williams taking one of the highest honors of his class. The subject of his oration was "Matter and Spirit."

The reason why he received the honor of the appointment to the metaphysical oration is given by Dr. Hopkins: "There was a large general capacity applicable to any sub

ject, and sound sense. As he was more mature than most, he naturally had a readier and firmer grasp of the higher studies. Hence his appointment to the metaphysical oration, then one of the high honors of the class."

With his graduation at Williams, technically speaking, his student days" were ended; but practically he only began, at that time, to study. His had been a work of preparation. The machinery of his mind was well in hand; and with a dauntless spirit he began the journey toward the horizon of the kingdom of knowledge, for which he had had a longing desire almost from the hour in which he left the cradle in which his mother rocked him.

After leaving Williams with the unreserved confidence and admiration of the President and the Faculty, and the genuine friendship of his associates, he came back to Hiram. He was now twenty-five years old, strong and active, and splendidly equipped for the work of his life.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HIRAM TEACHER AND PRINCIPAL.

In an address to educators, in 1879, Mr. Garfield said: "I feel at home among teachers; and, I may say, I look back with more satisfaction upon my work as a teacher, than upon any other work I have done;" and, again, in the same address: "It has long been my opinion that we are all educated, whether children, men or women, far more by personal influence than by books and the apparatus of the schools. If I should be taken back into boyhood today, and had all the libraries and apparatus of a university, with ordinary routine professors, offered me on the one hand, and on the other, a great, luminous, rich-souled man, such as Dr. Hopkins was twenty years ago, in a tent in the woods, alone, I should say, give me Dr. Hopkins for my college course, rather than any university with only routine professors. The privilege of sitting down before a great clear-headed, large-hearted man, and breathing the atmosphere of his life, and being drawn up to him, and lifted up by him, and learning his methods of thinking and living, is in itself an enormous educating power."

In Dr. Hopkins' clear and comprehensive view of what an education is, he not only includes "that instruction and training by which a man gains the skill to do in the best manner whatever he may be called to do," but, also,