When I left the train at Cleveland in the morning the newsboys pushed at me a Cleveland Democratic daily, with a rooster's picture covering the whole front page, and the announcement that the Democrats had carried Maine. The belief was universal then that "as Maine goes so goes the Union," and whichever party carried that State in the September election, the country would follow in the presidential contest in November.
I took the next train to Mentor, the residence of General Garfield. I found at the station a score or more of country wagons and carriages waiting for passengers. I said to the farmers: "Will any of you take me up to General Garfield's residence?" One of them answered: "We will all take you up this morning, but if you had come yesterday you would have had to wait your turn."
It was a startling instance of the variableness of public opinion. Delegations from everywhere, on their way to extend greetings to the candidate, had read the morning papers and turned back, deciding not to go.
I found Garfield struggling bravely to overcome the depression which he felt. He was in close touch with the situation everywhere, and discussed it with discrimination and hopefulness.
The most affecting incident occurred while I was talking with him. His mother passed through the room and, patting him on the back, said: "James, the neighbors think it is all right; they are raising a banner at the corner."
Two old soldier friends came in, and the noonday dinner was a rare intellectual feast. The general was a brilliant conversationalist. His mind turned first to the accidents of careers. He asked me if there was not a time in my early struggles when if Providence had offered a modest certainty I would not have exchanged the whole future for it, and then continued: "There was a period in my early struggles as a teacher when, if I had been offered the principalship of an endowed academy, with an adequate salary, with the condition
that I must devote myself to its interests and abandon everything else, I am quite sure I would have accepted."
Of course, the hopeful application of this incident to the Maine defeat was that, no such offer having been made or accepted, he had made a glorious career in the army, rising to the head of the General Staff, and for twenty years had been the leading figure in the House of Representatives, and was now a recently elected United States senator and chosen candidate for president.
Then he turned to the instances where victory had been plucked from defeat in battles. After citing many instances he gave a word picture of the Battle of Chickamauga which was the finest thing of the kind I have ever heard or ever read.
After his two comrades left I told him of the interest which my friends were taking in his canvass, and that I would add their contribution to the campaign committee. The general instantly was exultant and jubilant. He fairly shouted: "Have I not proved to you all day that there is always a silver lining to the cloud, and that the darkest hour is just before dawn?"
It was one of the sources of General Garfield's success as an orator that he was very emotional and sentimental. He happily carried with him amid all struggles and disappointments, as well as successes in the making of a career, the buoyant, hopeful, companionable, and affectionate interests which characterize the ambitious senior who has just left college to take his plunge into the activities of life.