But no such legends hung round the name of Garfield at Williams College. He was there under great pecuniary pressure, and for a high and solemn purpose. He was there for work, not play. Every thing which looked like a turning aside from the straight and narrow way, was indignantly spurned. At one time he caught the fever for playing chess. He was a superior player, and enjoyed the game immensely. But when he found it carried him to late hours, he denied himself the pleasure entirely.
But he stepped at once to the front rank as a debater in his literary society. His power of statement, his grasp of facts, his quick repartee, combined to make him the leading orator of the college. His method of preparation showed the mind of a master. The subject of debate he would divide into branches, and assign a separate topic to each of his allies for investigation, distributing each topic according to their respective qualities of mind. Each man overhauled the college library, gathering and annotating all the facts and authorities upon his particular branch of study, and submitted his notes to Garfield, who would then analyze the mass of facts, draw up the propositions, which were to bear down like Macedonian phalanxes upon the enemy, and redistribute the branches of the question to his debaters for presentation on the rostrum.
His mind never seemed foggy. Odd scraps of information, which ordinary men would have been unable or afraid to use, he wielded like a club about his adversaries’ heads. In a public debate in his junior year, the preceding speaker had used a lengthy and somewhat irrelevant illustration from Don Quixote. When Garfield’s turn for reply came, he brought down the house by saying: “The gentleman is correct in drawing analogies between his side of this question and certain passages in the life of Don Quixote. There is a marked resemblance, which I perceive myself, between his argument and the scene of the knight attacking the windmill; or, rather, it would be more appropriate to say that he resembles the windmill attacking the knight.” At the college supper, which followed the public entertainment, Garfield’s extensive acquaintance with standard literature was being talked about, when he laughingly told his admiring friends that he had never read Don Quixote, and had only heard a mention of the tournament between the crazy knight and the windmill.
His classmates, in writing of the impressions made on them by their college chum, speak much of his warm, social disposition, and his fondness for jokes. He had a sweet, large, wholesome nature, a hearty and cheerful manner, which endeared him most closely to the men among whom he spent the two years of college life. By the poorer and younger students he was almost worshiped for his kindliness and encouragement. He was a warm friend of every boy in the college; but for the weak, or sick, or poverty stricken, his heart overflowed with generous sympathy.
His morals were as spotless as the stars. A classmate, who knew him well, writes: “I never heard an angry word, or a hasty expression, or a sentence which needed to be recalled. He possessed equanimity of temper, self-possession, and self-control in the highest degree. What is more, I never heard a profane or improper word, or an indelicate allusion from his lips. He was in habits, speech, and example, a pure man.”
Williamstown, Massachusetts, where the college is located, is one of the most beautiful spots on the continent, and its magnificent mountain scenery made a deep impression on the mind of the tall Ohioan, who had been reared in a level country. It is only to people who live among them that mountains are unimpressive, and, perhaps, even then they make their impress on the character, giving it a religious loftiness and beauty.
An old institution of Williams College was “Mountain Day”—an annual holiday given for expeditions to some picturesque point in the vicinity. On one of these occasions, an incident revealed the courage and piety of “Old Gar,” as the boys lovingly called their leader. They were on the summit of “Old Greylock,” seven miles from the college. Although it was midsummer, the mountain top was cool; and, as the great glowing sun sank behind the western range, the air became chilly. The group of collegians were gathered about a camp-fire that blazed up briskly in the darkening air. Some were sitting, some standing, but all were silent. The splendor and solemnity of the scene; the dark winding valley; the circling range of mountains; the over-bending sky; the distant villages, with the picturesque old college towers; the faint tinkle of the cowbell; the unspeakable glories of the sunset,—
“As through the West, where sank the crimson day,
Meek twilight slowly sailed, and waved her banners gray,”—
filled every thoughtful heart with religious awe. Just as the silence became oppressive, it was broken by the voice of Garfield: “Boys, it is my habit to read a chapter in the Bible every evening with my absent mother. Shall I read aloud?” The little company assented; and, drawing from his pocket a well-worn Testament, he read, in soft, rich tones, the chapter which the mother in Ohio was reading at the same time, and then called on a classmate to kneel on that mountain top and pray.