The scene at the inauguration of her son—when he stood in the presence of the most distinguished men and women of the land, and saw a sea of human beings before him such as no man could count, and turning from them all kissed his old mother first and then his wife—will never be forgotten. The people could talk of nothing else then, and cannot now recall the event without dwelling upon it. The new President might well have overlooked his mother at such a time and been formal with his wife, but he was husband and son first, and the young men who witnessed the spectacle were benefited and blessed by it.
Such filial and husbandly devotion won President Garfield the respect of wives and mothers throughout the land—a respect which kindled into affection in the time that came. A speedy illustration of the effect of this act was given by a young school-girl who had been an eye-witness to it, and whose enthusiasm was checked by her companion. “It was done for effect,” he teasingly remarked. “It was done because he is a knight—a real Sir Galahad!” she replied, the bright eyes sparkling, the rosy cheeks flushing, as she defended her hero. That little act was the tie that bound the women of this country to those two women as nothing else could, and it was an assurance of a happy home which aroused generous American sentiment for the new White House occupants.
Mrs. Garfield was eighty years of age when her youngest child entered upon the performance of the highest office in his country, and very naturally she was the object of much sincere interest. When the Presidential party reached Washington, she was escorted from the car by her son and placed in the carriage of President Hayes, which awaited her coming. She was driven to the White House direct, and was there to welcome her son and daughter when they came over from the Riggs House in the evening to see her. Her heart must have throbbed with thankfulness and delight that night as she looked back over the years that lay behind her, thought of the husband dead for fifty years, and dwelt upon the career of her boy, who had grown up by her side, and was the first in the land and ruler of a nation.
Incidents of her early life are rare, and from a relative, an aged man, who knew her in girlhood, these facts are obtained:
“Eliza Ballou and a sister, about 1820, by the death of their parents, were left alone in the world and unprovided for, so far as the inheritance or possession of property was concerned. Preferring to live among relatives, one went to reside with an uncle in northern Ohio, and the other, Eliza, came to another uncle, the father of Samuel Arnold, who then lived on a farm near Norwich, Muskingum county, Ohio. There Eliza Ballou made her home, cheerfully helping at the house or in the field, as was then sometimes the custom in a pioneer country. Having something more than what at that day was an ordinary education, Eliza procured about twenty pupils and taught a summer school. The school-house was one of the most primitive kind, and stood in the edge of a dense and heavily-timbered woods. One day there came up a fearful storm of wind and rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The woods were badly wrecked, but the wind left the old log school-house uninjured. Not so the lightning. A bolt struck a tree that projected closely over the roof and then the roof of the building itself. Some of the pupils were greatly alarmed, and no doubt thought it the crack of doom or day of judgment. The teacher, as calm and collected as possible, tried to quiet her pupils and keep them in their places. A man who was one of the pupils, in speaking of the occurrence, says that for a little while he remembered nothing, and then he looked around and saw the teacher and all the pupils lying dead on the floor, as he thought. Presently the teacher began to move a little, and rose to her feet. Then, one by one, the pupils got up, with a single exception. Help, medical and otherwise, was obtained as soon as possible for this one, and, though life was saved for a time, reason had forever fled. This was a fearful experience for a young female teacher, and it probably ended her career as an instructress.
“Eliza Ballou’s sister married in northern Ohio, and while on a visit to her the former made the acquaintance of Abram Garfield, and subsequently married him. When James was about sixteen years old, he and his widowed mother visited Muskingum county in search of a school for the young man. They visited the family of the elder Arnold, at Norwich, and also the family of Samuel Arnold, now a citizen of New Lexington, and before referred to. The unusual intelligence of the boy and the astonishing affection between mother and son were what chiefly impressed itself upon the minds of those who entertained the poor humble boy who was to become a future President of the United States, and die a martyr to the high official position, more widely lamented than any other man had ever been. There appeared to be no opening for a school in the neighborhood of Norwich, and mother and son went to Uncle Ballou’s, in another part of the county, where James got a school and taught a single term. The money thus earned he applied in further educating himself. And this was why he and his mother were hunting a school.”
Forty-five years later the proudest day of that mother’s life had come, and she went forth to meet it, treading lightly, forgetting that she was old, and remembering that it was “her baby” who was to be made President of the United States. “There is the President’s mother,” was whispered among the throng, as a small, elderly lady, dressed in black silk, with her white head covered with a close-fitting bonnet, stepped into the Senate gallery. It was the woman in her that made her so calm and composed as she looked down upon the scene before her; it was the mother in her that caused her withered cheeks to flush and the tears to start as she saw her son come upon the floor, surrounded by the chief officers of the nation.
She was the first to receive him as he entered the Executive Mansion, and a sweeter picture has rarely been seen on earth than this little mother presented as she advanced, with a proud step and eyes full of tears, to greet her son. What mattered it to her if the grandest civil and military procession ever seen in Washington had escorted him there and was awaiting his presence impatiently! She was his mother by right of royal reverence as by ties of nature, and she was not disappointed in the honor paid her. She could walk under his outstretched arm thirty years before without stooping; but he paid her the same deference he gave her when he was a little son and not a great man—when she was a hard-toiling and strong-armed woman, and not the mother of the Chief Magistrate of the country.
Despite her fatigue she wanted to see all that was done in her son’s honor, and when the party left the lunch-table and went to the reviewing-stand on the avenue in front of the Mansion, Mother Garfield was one of the number, and for a long while sat near her son enjoying the sight. The vast multitude that filed in front of that stand scarcely had time to note the presence of the venerable woman before them, but the people about her watched her with a satisfaction almost undefinable to themselves and never to be forgotten now, in view of all that has transpired.
A few days after she was established in the White House she wrote a letter to a relative in the West which, as here given, does not show the handwriting tremulous with age, yet exhibits all the beautiful spirit of the writer: