and to your own personal and political fortunes in the present and in
the future. Your administration must be made brilliantly successful, and
strong in the confidence and pride of the people, not at all directing
its energies for re-election, and yet compelling that result by the
logic of events and by the imperious necessities of the situation.

"I accept it as one of the happiest circumstances connected with this
affair, that in allying my political fortunes with yours--or rather, for
the time merging mine in yours--my heart goes with my head, and that I
carry to you not only political support, but personal and devoted
friendship. I can but regard it as somewhat remarkable that two men of
the same age, entering Congress at the same time, influenced by the same
aims, and cherishing the same ambitions, should never, for a single
moment, in eighteen years of close intimacy, have had a misunderstanding
or a coolness, and that our friendship has steadily grown with our
growth, and strengthened with our strength.

"It is this fact which has led me to the conclusion embodied in this
letter; for, however much, my dear Garfield, I might admire you as a
statesman, I would not enter your Cabinet if I did not believe in you as
a man and love you as a friend."

When it is remembered that Mr. Blaine before the meeting of the
convention was looked upon as the probable recipient of the honor that
fell to Garfield, the generous warmth of this letter will be accounted
most creditable to both of the two friends, whose strong friendship
rivalry could not weaken or diminish.

So the new Administration entered upon what promised to be a successful
course. I can not help recording, as a singular circumstance, that the
three highest officers were ex-teachers. Of Garfield's extended services
as teacher, beginning with the charge of a district school in the
wilderness, and ending with the presidency of a college, we already
know. Reference has also been made to the early experience of the
Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur, in managing a country school. To this
it may be added that Mr. Blaine, too, early in life was a teacher in an
academy, and, as may readily be supposed, a successful one. It is seldom
in other countries that similar honors crown educational workers. It
may be mentioned, however, that Louis Philippe, afterward King of the
French, while an exile in this country, gave instruction in his native
language. It is not, however, every ruler of boys that is qualified to
become a ruler of men. Yet, in our own country, probably a majority of
our public men have served in this capacity.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE TRAGIC END.


I should like to end my story here, and feel that it was complete. I
should like with my countrymen to be still looking forward with interest
to the successful results of an administration, guided by the
experienced statesman whose career we have followed step by step from
its humble beginnings. But it can not be.

On the second of July, in the present year, a startling rumor was borne
on the wings of the lightning to the remotest parts of the land:

"President Garfield has been assassinated!"

The excitement was only paralleled by that which prevailed in 1865, when
Abraham Lincoln was treacherously killed by an assassin. But in this
later case the astonishment was greater, and all men asked, "What can it
mean?"

We were in a state of profound peace. No wars nor rumors of war
disturbed the humble mind, and the blow was utterly unexpected and
inexplicable.

The explanation came soon enough. It was the work of a wretched
political adventurer, who, inflated by an overweening estimate of his
own abilities and importance, had made a preposterous claim to two high
political offices--the post of Minister to Austria, and Consul to
Paris--and receiving no encouragement in either direction, had
deliberately made up his mind to "remove" the President, as he termed
it, in the foolish hope that his chances of gaining office would be
better under another administration.

My youngest readers will remember the sad excitement of that eventful
day. They will remember, also, how the public hopes strengthened or
weakened with the varying bulletins of each day during the protracted
sickness of the nation's head. They will not need to be reminded how
intense was the anxiety everywhere manifested, without regard to party
or section, for the recovery of the suffering ruler. And they will
surely remember the imposing demonstrations of sorrow when the end was
announced. Some of the warmest expressions of grief came from the
South, who in this time of national calamity were at one with their
brothers of the North. And when, on the 26th of September, the last
funeral rites were celebrated, and the body of the dead President was
consigned to its last resting-place in the beautiful Lake View Cemetery,
in sight of the pleasant lake on which his eyes rested as a boy, never
before had there been such imposing demonstrations of grief in our
cities and towns.

These were not confined to public buildings, and to the houses and
warehouses of the rich, but the poorest families displayed their bit of
crape. Outside of a miserable shanty in Brooklyn was displayed a cheap
print of the President, framed in black, with these words written below,
"We mourn our loss." Even as I write, the insignia of grief are still to
be seen in the tenement-house districts on the East Side of New York,
and there seems a reluctance to remove them.

But not alone to our own country were confined the exhibitions of
sympathy, and the anxious alternations of hope and fear. There was
scarcely a portion of the globe in which the hearts of the people were
not deeply stirred by the daily bulletins that came from the sick couch
of the patient sufferer. Of the profound impression made in England I
shall give a description, contributed to the New York _Tribune_ by its
London correspondent, Mr. G.W. Smalley, only premising that the sympathy
and grief were universal: from the Queen, whose messages of tender,
womanly sympathy will not soon be forgotten, to the humblest
day-laborers in the country districts. Never in England has such grief
been exhibited at the sickness and death of a foreign ruler, and the
remembrance of it will draw yet closer together, for all time to come,
the two great sections of the English-speaking tongue. Were it not a
subject of such general interest, I should apologize for the space I
propose to give to England's mourning:

"It happened that some of the humbler classes were among the most eager
to signify their feelings. The omnibus-drivers had each a knot of crape
on his whip. Many of the cabmen had the same thing, and so had the
draymen. In the city, properly so called, and along the water-side, it
was the poorer shops and the smaller craft that most frequently
exhibited tokens of public grief. Of the people one met in mourning the
same thing was true. Between mourning put on for the day and that which
was worn for private affliction it was not possible to distinguish. But
in many cases it was plain enough that the black coat on the
workingman's shoulders, or the bonnet or bit of crape which a shop-girl
wore, was no part of their daily attire. They had done as much as they
could to mark themselves as mourners for the President. It was not much,
but it was enough. It had cost them some thought, a little pains,
sometimes a little money, and they were people whose lives brought a
burden to every hour, who had no superfluity of strength or means, and
on whom even a slight effort imposed a distinct sacrifice. They are not
of the class to whom the Queen's command for Court mourning was
addressed. Few of that class are now in London. St. James' Street and
Pall Mall, Belgravia and May Fair are depopulated. The compliance with
the Queen's behest has been, I am sure, general and hearty, but
evidences of it were to be sought elsewhere than in London.

"Of other demonstrations it can hardly be necessary to repeat or enlarge
upon the description you have already had. The drawn blinds of the
Mansion House and of Buckingham Palace, the flags at half-mast in the
Thames on ships of every nationality, the Stock and Metal Exchanges
closed, the royal standard at half-mast on the steeple of the royal
church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; the darkened windows of great
numbers of banking houses and other places of business in the city
itself--of all these you have heard.

"At the West End, the shops were not, as a rule, draped with black. Some
of them had the Union Jack at half-mast; a few the Stars and Stripes in
black with white and black hangings on the shop fronts. The greater
number of shop-keepers testified to their association with the general
feeling by shutters overhanging the tops of the windows, or by
perpendicular slabs at intervals down the glass. Some had nothing; but
in Regent Street, Bond Street, St. James' Street, and Piccadilly, which
are the fashionable business streets of the West End, those which had
nothing were the exception. The American Legation in Victoria Street,
and the American Consulate in Old Broad Street, both of which were
closed, were in deep mourning. The American Dispatch Agency, occupying
part of a conspicuous building in Trafalgar Square, had nothing to
indicate its connection with America or any share in the general
sorrow.

"In many private houses--I should say the majority in such streets as I
passed through during the day--the blinds were down as they would have
been for a death in the family. The same is true of some of the clubs,
and some of the hotels. The Reform Club, of which Garfield is said to
have been an honorary member, had a draped American flag over the door.

"To-day, as on every previous day since the President's death, the
London papers print many columns of accounts, each account very brief,
of what has been done and said in the so-called provincial towns. One
journal prefaces its copious record by the impressive statement that
from nearly every town and village telegraphic messages have been sent
by its correspondents describing the respect paid to General Garfield on
the day of his funeral. These tributes are necessarily in many places of
a similar character, yet the variety of sources from which they proceed
is wide enough to include almost every form of municipal,
ecclesiastical, political, or individual activity. Everywhere bells are
tolled, churches thrown open for service, flags drooping, business is
interrupted, resolutions are passed. Liverpool, as is natural for the
multiplicity and closeness of her relations with the United States, may
perhaps be said to have taken the lead. She closed, either in whole or
in part, her Cotton Market, her Produce Markets, her Provision Market,
her Stock Exchange. Her papers came out in mourning. The bells tolled
all day long.

"Few merchants, one reads, came to their places of business, and most of
those who came were in black. The Mayor and members of the Corporation,
in their robes, attended a memorial service at St. Peter's, and the
cathedral overflowed with its sorrowing congregation. Manchester,
Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow, Bradford, Edinburgh were not much behind
Liverpool in demonstrations, and not at all behind it in spirit. It is
an evidence of the community of feeling between the two countries that
so much of the action is official. What makes these official acts so
striking, also, is the evident feeling at the bottom of this, that
between England and America there is some kind of a relation which
brings the loss of the President into the same category with the loss of
an English ruler.

"At Edinburgh it is the Lord Provost who orders the bells to be tolled
till two. At Glasgow the Town Council adjourns. At Stratford-on-Avon the
Mayor orders the flag to be hoisted at half-mast over the Town Hall, and
the blinds to be drawn, and invites the citizens to follow his example,
which they do; the bell at the Chapel of the Holy Cion tolling every
minute while the funeral is solemnized at Cleveland. At Leeds the bell
in the Town Hall is muffled and tolled, and the public meeting which the
United States Consul, Mr. Dockery, addresses, is under the presidency of
the acting Mayor. Mr. Dockery remarked that as compared with other great
towns, so few were the American residents in Leeds, that the great
exhibition of sympathy had utterly amazed him. The remark is natural,
but Mr. Dockery need not have been amazed. The whole population of Leeds
was American yesterday; and of all England. At Oxford the Town Council
voted an address to Mrs. Garfield. At the Plymouth Guildhall the maces,
the emblems of municipal authority, were covered with black At Dublin
the Lord Mayor proposed, and the Aldermen adopted, a resolution of
sympathy.

"In all the cathedral towns the cathedral authorities prescribed
services for the occasion. I omit, because I have no room for them,
scores of other accounts, not less significant and not less affecting.
They are all in one tone and one spirit. Wherever in England, yesterday,
two or three were gathered together, President Garfield's name was
heard. Privately and publicly, simply as between man and man, or
formally with the decorous solemnity and stately observance befitting
bodies which bear a relation to the Government, a tribute of honest
grief was offered to the President and his family, and of honest
sympathy to his country. Steeple spoke to steeple, distant cities
clasped hands. The State, the Church, the people of England were at one
together in their sorrow, and in their earnest wish to offer some sort
of comfort to their mourning brothers beyond the sea. You heard in every
mouth the old cry, 'Blood is thicker than water.' And the voice which is
perhaps best entitled to speak for the whole nation added, 'Yes, though
the water be a whole Atlantic Ocean.'"

In addition to these impressive demonstrations, the Archbishop of
Canterbury held a service and delivered an address in the church of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, on Monday. Mr. Lowell had been invited, of
course, by the church wardens, and a pew reserved for him, but when he
reached the church with his party half his pew was occupied.

"The Archbishop, who wore deep crape over his Episcopal robes, avoided
calling his discourse a sermon, and avoided, likewise, through the
larger portion of it, the purely professional tone common in the pulpit
on such occasions. During a great part of his excellent address he
spoke, as anybody else might have done, of the manly side of the
President's character. He gave, moreover, his own view of the reason why
all England has been so strangely moved. 'During the long period of the
President's suffering,' said the Archbishop, 'we had time to think what
manner of man this was over whom so great a nation was mourning day by
day. We learned what a noble history his was, and we were taught to
trace a career such as England before knew nothing of.'

"Among the innumerable testimonies to the purity and beauty of
Garfield's character," says Mr. Smalley, "this address of the Primate of
the English Church surely is one which all Americans may acknowledge
with grateful pride."




CHAPTER XXXV.

MR. DEPEW'S ESTIMATE OF GARFIELD.


My task is drawing near a close. I have, in different parts of this
volume, expressed my own estimate of our lamented President. No
character in our history, as it seems to me, furnishes a brighter or
more inspiring example to boys and young men. It is for this reason that
I have been induced to write the story of his life especially for
American boys, conceiving that in no way can I do them a greater
service.

But I am glad, in confirmation of my own estimate, to quote at length
the eloquent words of Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, in his address before the
Grand Army of the Republic. He says of Garfield:

"In America and Europe he is recognized as an illustrious example of the
results of free institutions. His career shows what can be accomplished
where all avenues are open and exertion is untrammeled. Our annals
afford no such incentive to youth as does his life, and it will become
one of the republic's household stories. No boy in poverty almost
hopeless, thirsting for knowledge, meets an obstacle which Garfield did
not experience and overcome. No youth despairing in darkness feels a
gloom which he did not dispel. No young man filled with honorable
ambition can encounter a difficulty which he did not meet and surmount.
For centuries to come great men will trace their rise from humble
origins to the inspirations of that lad who learned to read by the light
of a pine-knot in a log-cabin; who, ragged and barefooted, trudged along
the tow-path of the canal, and without money or affluent relations,
without friends or assistance, by faith in himself and in God, became
the most scholarly and best equipped statesman of his time, one of the
foremost soldiers of his country, the best debater in the strongest of
deliberative bodies, the leader of his party, and the Chief Magistrate
of fifty millions of people before he was fifty years of age.

"We are not here to question the ways of Providence. Our prayers were
not answered as we desired, though the volume and fervor of our
importunity seemed resistless; but already, behind the partially lifted
veil, we see the fruits of the sacrifice. Old wounds are healed and
fierce feuds forgotten. Vengeance and passion which have survived the
best statesmanship of twenty years are dispelled by a common sorrow.
Love follows sympathy. Over this open grave the cypress and willow are
indissolubly united, and into it are buried all sectional differences
and hatreds. The North and the South rise from bended knees to embrace
in the brotherhood of a common people and reunited country. Not this
alone, but the humanity of the civilized world has been quickened and
elevated, and the English-speaking people are nearer to-day in peace and
unity than ever before. There is no language in which petitions have not
arisen for Garfield's life, and no clime where tears have not fallen for
his death. The Queen of the proudest of nations, for the first time in
our recollections, brushes aside the formalities of diplomacy, and,
descending from the throne, speaks for her own and the hearts of all her
people, in the cable, to the afflicted wife, which says: 'Myself and my
children mourn with you.'

"It was my privilege to talk for hours with Gen. Garfield during his
famous trip to the New York conference in the late canvass, and jet it
was not conversation or discussion. He fastened upon me all the powers
of inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness, and absorbed all I had learned
in twenty years of the politics of this State. Under this restless and
resistless craving for information, he drew upon all the resources of
the libraries, gathered all the contents of the newspapers, and sought
and sounded the opinions of all around him, and in his broad, clear mind
the vast mass was so assimilated and tested that when he spoke or acted,
it was accepted as true and wise. And yet it was by the gush and warmth
of old college-chum ways, and not by the arts of the inquisitor, that
when he had gained he never lost a friend. His strength was in
ascertaining and expressing the average sense of his audience. I saw him
at the Chicago Convention, and whenever that popular assemblage seemed
drifting into hopeless confusion, his tall form commanded attention, and
his clear voice and clear utterances instantly gave the accepted
solution.

"I arrived at his house at Mentor in the early morning following the
disaster in Maine. While all about him were in panic, he saw only a
damage which must and could be repaired. 'It is no use bemoaning the
past,' he said; 'the past has no uses except for its lessons.' Business
disposed of, he threw aside all restraint, and for hours his
speculations and theories upon philosophy, government, education,
eloquence; his criticism of books, his reminiscences of men and events,
made that one of the white-letter days of my life. At Chickamauga he won
his major-general's commission. On the anniversary of the battle he
died. I shall never forget his description of the fight--so modest, yet
graphic. It is imprinted on my memory as the most glorious
battle-picture words ever painted. He thought the greatest calamity
which could befall a man was to lose ambition. I said to him, 'General,
did you never in your earlier struggle have that feeling I have so often
met with, when you would have compromised your future for a certainty,
and if so, what?' 'Yes,' said he, 'I remember well when I would have
been willing to exchange all the possibilities of my life for the
certainty of a position as a successful teacher.' Though he died
neither a school principal nor college professor, and they seem humble
achievements compared with what he did, his memory will instruct while
time endures.

"His long and dreadful sickness lifted the roof from his house and
family circle, and his relations as son, husband, and father stood
revealed in the broadest sunlight of publicity. The picture endeared him
wherever is understood the full significance of that matchless word
'Home.' When he stood by the capitol just pronounced the President of
the greatest and most powerful of republics, the exultation of the hour
found its expression in a kiss upon the lips of his mother. For weeks,
in distant Ohio, she sat by the gate watching for the hurrying feet of
the messenger bearing the telegrams of hope or despair. His last
conscious act was to write a letter of cheer and encouragement to that
mother, and when the blow fell she illustrated the spirit she had
instilled in him. There were no rebellious murmurings against the Divine
dispensation, only in utter agony: 'I have no wish to live longer; I
will join him soon; the Lord's will be done.' When Dr. Bliss told him he
had a bare chance of recovery, 'Then,' said he, 'we will take that
chance, doctor.' When asked if he suffered pain, he answered: 'If you
can imagine a trip-hammer crashing on your body, or cramps such as you
have in the water a thousand times intensified, you can have some idea
of what I suffer.' And yet, during those eighty-one days was heard
neither groan nor complaint. Always brave and cheerful, he answered the
fear of the surgeons with the remark: 'I have faced death before; I am
not afraid to meet him now.' And again, 'I have strength enough left to
fight him yet'--and he could whisper to the Secretary of the Treasury an
inquiry about the success of the funding scheme, and ask the
Postmaster-General how much public money he had saved.

"As he lay in the cottage by the sea, looking out upon the ocean, whose
broad expanse was in harmony with his own grand nature, and heard the
beating of the waves upon the shore, and felt the pulsations of millions
of hearts against his chamber door, there was no posing for history and
no preparation of last words for dramatic effect. With simple
naturalness he gave the military salute to the sentinel gazing at his
window, and that soldier, returning it in tears, will probably carry
its memory to his dying day and transmit it to his children. The voice
of his faithful wife came from her devotions in another room, singing,
'Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah.' 'Listen,' he cries, 'is not that
glorious?' and in a few hours heaven's portals opened and upborne upon
prayers as never before wafted spirit above he entered the presence of
God. It is the alleviation of all sorrow, public or private, that close
upon it press the duties of and to the living.

"The tolling bells, the minute-guns upon land and sea, the muffled drums
and funeral hymns fill the air while our chief is borne to his last
resting-place. The busy world is stilled for the hour when loving hands
are preparing his grave. A stately shaft will rise, overlooking the lake
and commemorating his deeds. But his fame will not live alone in marble
or brass. His story will be treasured and kept warm in the hearts of
millions for generations to come, and boys hearing it from their mothers
will be fired with nobler ambitions. To his countrymen he will always be
a typical American, soldier, and statesman. A year ago and not a
thousand people of the old world had ever heard his name, and now there
is scarcely a thousand who do not mourn his loss. The peasant loves him
because from the same humble lot he became one of the mighty of earth,
and sovereigns respect him because in his royal gifts and kingly nature
God made him their equal."




CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE LESSONS OF HIS LIFE.


Probably the nearest and closest friend of Garfield, intellectually
speaking, was his successor in the presidency of Hiram College, B.A.
Hinsdale. If any one understood the dead President it was he. For many
years they corresponded regularly, exchanging views upon all topics that
interested either. They would not always agree, but this necessarily
followed from the mental independence of each. To Mr. Hinsdale we turn
for a trustworthy analysis of the character and intellectual greatness
of his friend, and this he gives us in an article published in the N.Y.
_Independent_ of Sept. 29, 1881:

"First of all, James A. Garfield had greatness of nature. Were I limited
to one sentence of description, it would be: He was a great-natured man.
He was a man of strong and massive body. A strong frame, broad
shoulders, powerful vital apparatus, and a massive head furnished the
physical basis of his life. He was capable of an indefinite amount of
work, both physical and mental. His intellectual status was equally
strong and massive. He excelled almost all men both in the patient
accumulation of facts and in bold generalization. He had great power of
logical analysis, and stood with the first in rhetorical exposition. He
had the best instincts and habits of the scholar. He loved to roam in
every field of knowledge. He delighted in the creations of the
imagination--poetry, fiction, and art. He loved the deep things of
philosophy. He took a keen interest in scientific research. He gathered
into his storehouse the facts of history and politics, and threw over
the whole the life and power of his own originality.

"The vast labors that he crowded into those thirty years--labors rarely
equaled in the history of men--are the fittest gauge of his physical and
intellectual power. His moral character was on a scale equally large and
generous. His feelings were delicate, his sympathies most responsive,
his sense of justice keen. He was alive to delicate points of honor. No
other man whom I have known had such heart. He had great faith in human
nature and was wholly free from jealousy and suspicion. He was one of
the most helpful and appreciative of men. His largeness of views and
generosity of spirit were such that he seemed incapable of personal
resentment. He was once exhorted to visit moral indignation upon some
men who had wronged him deeply. Fully appreciating the baseness of their
conduct, he said he would try, but added: 'I am afraid some one will
have to help me.'

"What is more, General Garfield was religious, both by nature and by
habit. His mind was strong in the religious element. His near relatives
received the Gospel as it was proclaimed fifty years ago by Thomas and
Alexander Campbell. He made public profession of religion before he
reached his twentieth year and became a member of the same church, and
such he remained until his death. Like all men of his thought and
reading, he understood the hard questions that modern science and
criticism have brought into the field of religion. Whether he ever
wrought these out to his own full satisfaction I can not say. However
that may be, his native piety, his early training, and his sober
convictions held him fast to the great truths of revealed religion.
Withal, he was a man of great simplicity of character. No one could be
more approachable. He drew men to him as the magnet the iron filings.
This he did naturally and without conscious plan or effort. At times,
when the burden of work was heavy and his strength overdrawn, intimate
friends would urge him to withdraw himself somewhat from the crowds that
flocked to him; but almost always the advice was vain. His sympathy with
the people was immediate and quick. He seemed almost intuitively to read
the public thought and feeling. No matter what was his station, he
always remembered the rock from which he had himself been hewn.
Naturally he inspired confidence in all men who came into contact with
him. When a young man, and even a boy, he ranked in judgment and in
counsel with those much his seniors.

"It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have led a great
career. He was always with the foremost or in the lead, no matter what
the work in hand. He was a good wood-chopper and a good canal hand; he
was a good school janitor; and, upon the whole, ranked all competitors,
both in Hiram and in Williamstown, as a student. He was an excellent
teacher. He was the youngest man in the Ohio Senate. When made
brigadier-general, he was the youngest man of that rank in the army.
When he entered it, he was the youngest man on the floor of the House of
Representatives. His great ability and signal usefulness as teacher,
legislator, popular orator, and President must be passed with a single
reference.

"He retained his simplicity and purity of character to the end. Neither
place nor power corrupted his honest fiber. Advancement in public favor
and position gave him pleasure, but brought him no feeling of elation.
For many years President Garfield and the writer exchanged letters at
the opening of each new year. January 5th, last, he wrote:

"'For myself, the year has been full of surprises, and has brought more
sadness than joy. I am conscious of two things: first, that I have never
had, and do not think I shall take, the Presidential fever. Second, that
I am not elated with the election to that office. On the contrary, while
appreciating the honor and the opportunities which the place brings, I
feel heavily the loss of liberty which accompanies it, and especially
that it will in a great measure stop my growth.'

"March 26, 1881, in the midst of the political tempest following his
inauguration, he wrote: 'I throw you a line across the storm, to let you
know that I think, when I have a moment between breaths, of the dear old
quiet and peace of Hiram and Mentor.' How he longed for 'the dear old
quiet and peace of Hiram and Mentor' in the weary days following the
assassin's shot all readers of the newspapers know already.

"Such are some main lines in the character of this great-natured and
richly-cultured man. The outline is but poor and meager. Well do I
remember the days following the Chicago Convention, when the biographers
flocked to Mentor. How hard they found it to compress within the limits
both of their time and their pages the life, services, and character of
their great subject. One of these discouraged historians one day wearily
said: 'General, how much there is of you!'

"Space fails to speak of President Garfield's short administration.
Fortunately, it is not necessary. Nor can I give the history of the
assassination or sketch the gallant fight for life. His courage and
fortitude, faith and hope, patience and tenderness are a part of his
country's history. Dying, as well as living, he maintained his great
position with appropriate power and dignity. His waving his white hand
to the inmates of the White House, the morning he was borne sick out of
it, reminds one of dying Sidney's motioning the cup of water to the lips
of the wounded soldier. No man's life was ever prayed for by so many
people. The name of no living man has been upon so many lips. No
sick-bed was ever the subject of so much tender solicitude. That one so
strong in faculties, so rich in knowledge, so ripe in experience, so
noble in character, so needful to the nation, and so dear to his friends
should be taken in a way so foul almost taxes faith in the Divine love
and wisdom. Perhaps, however, in the noble lessons of those eighty days
from July 2d to September 19th, and in the moral unification of the
country, history will find full compensation for our great loss.

"Finally, the little white-haired mother and the constant wife must not
be passed unnoticed. How the old mother prayed and waited, and the
brave wife wrought and hoped, will live forever, both in history and in
legend. It is not impiety to say that wheresoever President Garfield's
story shall be told in the whole world there shall also this, that these
women have done, be told for a memorial of them."