Upon his return home, Garfield was immediately appointed Professor of Ancient Languages and Literature at Hiram Institute. Writing to a friend at this time, he says,—
"I have attained to the height of my ambition. I have my diploma from an eastern college, and my position here at Hiram as instructor; and now I shall devote all my energies to this Institution."
The following year, upon the resignation of A. L. Hayden, Garfield was appointed President of Hiram Institute. He was now twenty-six years of age, and one of his pupils writing of him at this time, says,—
"He was a tall, strong man, full of animal spirits, and many a time he used to run out on the green and play cricket with us. He combined an affectionate and confiding manner with respect for order in a most successful manner. If he wanted to speak to a pupil, either for reproof or approbation, he would generally manage to get one arm around him and draw him close up to him. He had a peculiar way of shaking hands, too, giving a twist to your arm and drawing you right up to him. This sympathetic manner has helped him to advancement. He took very kindly to me, and assisted me in various ways, because I was poor and was janitor of the buildings, and swept them out in the morning, and built the fires as he had done only six years before, when he was a pupil at the same school.
"Once when he assigned me a task that I feared was beyond my powers, I said,—
"'I am afraid I cannot do that.'
"'What!' he exclaimed, 'you are not going to give up without trying! It seems to me, Darsie, when one is in a place he can easily fill, it is time for him to shove out of it into one that requires his utmost exertion.'"
The present principal at Hiram, President Hinsdale, was one of Garfield's pupils, and it was through his advice and constant encouragement that the struggling student undertook the work of a liberal education.
"Tell me," he writes Hinsdale, "do you not feel a spirit stirring within you that longs to know, to do, and to dare, to hold converse with the great world of thought, and hold before you some high and noble object to which the vigor of your mind and the strength of your arm may be given? Do you not have longings like these which you breathe to no one, and which you feel must be heeded, or you will pass through life unsatisfied and regretful? I am sure you have them, and they will forever cling around your heart till you obey their mandate.... God has endowed some of His children with desires and capabilities for an extended field of labor and influence, and every life should be shaped according to 'what the man hath.' I know you have capabilities for occupying positions of high and important trust in the scenes of active life. I sincerely hope you will not, without an earnest struggle, give up a course of liberal study."
Hinsdale, as we all know, followed the advice of his earnest, sympathetic teacher, and is now ranked among the foremost scholars of the day.