GARFIELD IN 1881, WHILE PRESIDENT. AGE 49.
From a photograph by Handy, Washington.
THE TRAGEDY OF GARFIELD'S ADMINISTRATION.
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES AND RECORDS OF CONVERSATIONS.
By Murat Halstead.
JAMES A. GARFIELD, twentieth President of the United States, had the good fortune to be a boy long after he reached the years of manhood. This fact is the key to his character and the explanation of his career. His boyishness was not lack of manhood; it was a lingering youthfulness of spirit, a keen susceptibility of impression, an elasticity of mind, a hearty enjoyment of his strong life, a tenderness and freshness of heart, an openness to friend and foe, something of deference to others, and of diffidence, not without understanding of and confidence in his own powers. He was youthful with the noble youth of the fields and schools and churches, of the farms and villages of the West, when he became a member of the legislature of Ohio, from which he passed into the army, that was like a university to him. As a soldier he was typically a big, brave boy, powerful, ardent, amiable, rejoicing in his strength. In eastern Kentucky he led his regiment in its first fight. He found out where the enemy were, and pulling off his coat—the regulation country style of preparing for battle—headed a foot-race straight for "the rebs," and routed them. It was literally a case of "come on, boys." Those opposed, so to speak, thought the devil possessed the robust young man in his shirt-sleeves.
