As it glides thro’ the shadow and sheen.”
Father, mother, teacher, Uncle Will, all seem convinced that James can pass and enter college; so, though only thirteen years of age, his father takes him in the carriage, and they drive over to Washington.
It is a great experience for older heads, but for one so young, a veritable epoch in his history.
It does not take long to convince the president that he has drawn a prize, and he is entered with about forty other bright, smart boys, for the Freshman class in the autumn. After three months of vacation, the great work is to begin in real earnest, and the stuff those boys are made of is to be thoroughly tried and tested.
There was none of the hard, rough, and bitter experience in his boyhood days and early manhood to which so many of our nation’s great men were subjected. He had none of the long and desperate struggles with poverty and adversity which hung on Mr. Garfield’s early years. He knew nothing, by experience, of the privations and hardships through which Mr. Lincoln came to the high honors of the nation and the world, but sprang from the second generation after the Revolutionary war, and from a long line of ancestors who had been large land-owners and gentlemen, in the sense of wealth and education, as well as in that finely cultivated.
III.
IN COLLEGE.
THE summer of 1843 was bright with the anticipations of college life to the eager boy. Manhood seemed dawning upon him, in all its glory. Since his examinations, the great Dr. McConaughy had grasped his hand so kindly and drawn him to his side; then putting his arm around him had said, as he brushed the long, light hair from his forehead,—