The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-10-13

James Abram Garfield was the lat,
est, 1t Is fairly safe to say, the last
or the presidents born and bred in
log cabins. Notwithstanding that
humble start, he was one of the half.
dozen scholarly men who have sat in
the presidential chair.
Both the paternal Garfields and the
maternal Ballous, the forebears of this
Ohio president, were New England
ers and among the best types Of Yam
kee yoemanry. His struggling, labor
ious youth and young manhood made
Garfield also a representative of tho
greater New England which spread
itself over the upper half Of the mid.
die west.
When the boy was only 2. his pio-
neer father died fighting forest fire,
leaving -four young saplings," as he
called them, to the care of his wife,
who had to carry on the frontier farm
alone and face alone the problems of
bringing up her two boys and two
girls. With the help of her older son
in the field and of her older daughter
in the cabin, she raised the food for
her little brood, and grew and wove
and sewed the wool that clothed them.
More than that, she was their teacher,
too, cultivating their young minds and
training up their characters. Among
all the widows sons in the presidency.
none owed more to his mother than
the son of Eliza Ballou Garfield, and
none kept on paying it more faith
fully and gratefully.
A big. strong, hardy boy, Jim
Garfield had to work his way in the
world from the age of 10 or ~. Chop
ping wood at 25 cents a cord and his
board; driving mules on the towpath
of a canal or serving as deckhand CD
the boat at $40 a month and keep;
haying, harvesting, carpentering ard
teaching school, he put himself
through academies and through col
lege.
He also won wife along the way.
In a coeducational academy, which he
attended, he met and wooed Lucretia
Rudolph. After his college graduation
at Williams, he faithfully returned to
claim his Crete" and their marriage
is the first-doubtless it will be the
last-romance of "coads" in the mat
rimonial story of the presidency.
In his preparatory school, which al
forwards became Hiram college, Gar
field was janitor at first, until it was
discovered that he could teach the
other pupils English literature just as
well as he could tend the fires, draw
the water, sweep the floors. wash the
windows and ring the bell. Poverty
is good grindstone for putting a
sharp edge on the few who happen to
have the tempered steel in them; but
it sadly dullS the many.
nlH'S >.I,
road to an education. But it insured
him keen thirst at the end, and when
at last he arrived at Williams college,
back in his ancestral Massachusetts,
a big blonde, bearded man of rs, he
was ready to drink dry the fountain
of learning. He used to say his ideal
of a university was pine log, with
Mark Hopkins, the president of vii.
liams, sitting on one end of it, aud
himself at the other end.
If he had Staid in New England,
Garfield would have been professor
or a preacher. He became both after
returning home, but every man in
Ohio is, or at least used to be,
politician also.
He was principal of his old academy
at Hiram and doing more or less 10y
preaching in the pulpit of the Chris
tian or 'Campbellte" church, when
he was elected to the state senate.
He was still serving in those varied
capacities when he led a regiment
to the front at the outbreak of tbs
civil war.
With his lifelong habit of study,
the green colonel went to war with
sword in one hand and a book on
the military art in the other. Soon
he knew something of the principles
of his new job, and this enabled him