The first floor has a parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, wash-room and pantry, planned with every convenience by Mrs. Garfield, to whom the architect's papers were submitted.
Two of the pleasantest rooms on the second floor are fitted up especially for "Grandma Garfield;" one of these has a large, old-fashioned fire-place, and is conceded to be the brightest, cheeriest room in the whole house.
In the ell is a small room, thirteen and a half by fourteen feet, called by the children "papa's snuggery." It is not the library, but the walls are covered with book-shelves, and the little room seems to have been used by the busy statesman as a sort of "sanctum sanctorum."
The library is a separate building, a few steps to the northeast of the house. Garfield used to call it his "workshop," and the books of reference, indices, public documents, etc., piled up on the shelves, show the numerous tools he employed in his "literary carpentry."
This home at Mentor was purchased especially for the benefit of the Garfield children, but both father and mother enjoyed the quiet country life far better than the whirl of society at Washington.
"Isn't it strange," exclaimed Garfield, to one of his guests, "how a man will revive his early attachment to farm-life? For twenty-five years I scarcely remained on a farm for a longer period than a few days, but now I am an enthusiast. I can see now what I could not see when I was a boy. It is delightful to watch the growing crops."
As Washington turned with delight to the quiet shades of Mount Vernon, so Garfield looked forward each year to his summer at Mentor.
Oftentimes, his visitors would find him out in the fields, tossing hay with his boys, superintending the farm-work, or planning some new improvement.
In a letter to a friend, he says,—
"You can hardly imagine how completely I have turned my mind out of its usual channels during the last weeks. You know I have never been able to do anything moderately, and, to-day, I feel myself lame in every muscle with too much lifting and digging. I shall try to do a little less the coming week."