James A. Garfield.
ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
September 25, 1881.
I wish to lead your thoughts to one of the strangest things—one of the most difficult things to understand, which has ever occurred. On the second day of July last the President of the United States, when about to step into a railway train which was to carry him North, where he was to attend a college commencement, at the college where he was graduated, was shot down by an assassin.
I say it is one of the strangest things, because the President did not know the assassin, and had never injured him nor any of his friends. There was absolutely no motive for the hideous deed.
I say it is most difficult to understand, because we believe that Divine Providence overrules all events, holds all power, and we wonder why He permitted the wretch to do so deplorable a deed.
President Garfield was no ordinary man. He was emphatically a man of the people. He was born in a log-cabin which his father had built with his own hands. It was a very small house, twenty feet by thirty. When James was two years old, his father died, late in the autumn, and this boy with three other children were all dependent upon their mother for a support. How the lone widow passed that winter we do not know; but when the spring came there was a debt to be paid, and part of the farm had to go to pay it. About thirty acres of the clearing were left, and this little farm was worked by the mother and her oldest son. Only those who have lived on a farm in the country know how hard the work is. When James was five years old he was sent to school, a mile and a half away, and as this was a very long walk for so young a boy, his sister often carried the little boy on her back.
After a while the boy tried to learn the carpenter’s trade, and in this effort he spent two years or so, going to school at intervals and studying at spare hours at home. So he mastered grammar, arithmetic and geography. After that he became a sort of general help and book-keeper for a manufacturer in the neighborhood at $14 per month “and found,” and this was to him a very great advance. But not being well treated there, he soon left and took to chopping wood—at one time cutting about twenty-five cords for some $7. Then having read some tales of the sea, sailors’ stories, such as you have often read, he wanted to be a sailor; but when he applied for a place on the great lake, he looked so like a landsman from the country that no captain would engage him. So he went to the canal, and found employment in leading or driving horses or mules on the tow-path. But he was soon promoted to be a deck-hand and steersman, and often falling into the water (once almost being drowned) and meeting some other mishaps, he concluded that “following the water” was not his forte, and he abandoned it. By this time he had saved some money, and his brother Thomas lent him some more, and with another young man and a cousin he went to a neighboring town to the academy. These young fellows rented a room, borrowed some simple cooking utensils, a table and some chairs, made beds and filled them with straw, and set up house-keeping, and went to the academy.