mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode." With the requisite change of scene the same words would aptly portray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are engaged in a common struggle and where a common sympathy and hearty coöperation lighten the burden of each, is a very different poverty, different in kind, different in influence and effect from that conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day forced to contrast itself with neighboring wealth on which it feels a sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the agricultural regions of the West where a house-raising, or even a corn-husking, is a matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. This honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood and brain now training for the future citizenship and future government of the republic. Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of freeholder which has been the patent and passport of selfrespect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His adventure on the canal an alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner farmer boy's device for earning money, just as the New England lad begins a possible great career by sailing before the mast on a coasting vessel or on a -was a merchantman bound to the farther India or to the China Seas. No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position, as having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. General Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family love and family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those which were recalled with delight, and transmitted with profit and with pride. Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were extremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to learn. He could read at three years of age, and each winter he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the books to be found within the circle of his acquaintance; some of them he got by heart. While yet in childhood he was a constant student of the Bible, and became familiar with its literature. The dignity and earnestness of his speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this early training. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college education. To this. end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter's bench, and, in the winter season, teaching the common schools of the neighborhood |