He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat.
Be swift, my soul, to answer him, be jubilant at my feet;
For God is marching on.’
“I move, sir, that this House do now adjourn.”
The motion being agreed to, the House was declared adjourned.
It is now necessary to hasten on to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, wherein General Garfield, no longer under the disadvantages of a new member, continued to develop rapidly as an able worker.
General Garfield was a thorough-going temperance man. On returning to his house in Painesville, Ohio, in the summer of 1865, he found the good people of that place in trouble on account of a brewery which had been established in their midst. All efforts to have it removed had been unavailing. Public meetings were held. Garfield attended one of these, and while there announced that he would that day remove the brewery.
He just went over to the brewer and bought him out for $10,000. The liquor on hand, and such brewing machinery as could not be used for any thing else, he destroyed. When autumn came he used his new establishment as a cider-mill. The cider was kept till it became good vinegar, and then sold. The General thus did a good thing for the public, and, it is said, made money out of the investment, until, after several years, he sold the building.
When Congress met in December, 1865, it had to face a great task. The rebellion had been put down, but at great cost; and they had an enormous debt to provide for. Four years of war had disorganized every thing, and great questions of finance, involving tariffs, and taxation, and a thousand vexed themes of public policy, hung with leaden weight over the heads of our national legislators.
Garfield was one of the few men who were both able and willing to face the music and bury themselves in the bewildering world of figures which loomed in the dusky foreground of coming events. The interest alone on our liabilities amounted to $150,000,000.