“It was my privilege to talk for hours with Gen. Garfield during his famous trip to the New York conference in the late canvass, and jet it was not conversation or discussion.  He fastened upon me all the powers of inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness, and absorbed all I had learned in twenty years of the politics of this State.  Under this restless and resistless craving for information, he drew upon all the resources of the libraries, gathered all the contents of the newspapers, and sought and sounded the opinions of all around him, and in his broad, clear mind the vast mass was so assimilated and tested that when he spoke or acted, it was accepted as true and wise.  And yet it was by the gush and warmth of old college-chum ways, and not by the arts of the inquisitor, that when he had gained he never lost a friend.  His strength was in ascertaining and expressing the average sense of his audience.  I saw him at the Chicago Convention, and whenever that popular assemblage seemed drifting into hopeless confusion, his tall form commanded attention, and his clear voice and clear utterances instantly gave the accepted solution.

“I arrived at his house at Mentor in the early morning following the disaster in Maine.  While all about him were in panic, he saw only a damage which must and could be repaired.  ’It is no use bemoaning the past,’ he said; ‘the past has no uses except for its lessons.’  Business disposed of, he threw aside all restraint, and for hours his speculations and theories upon philosophy, government, education, eloquence; his criticism of books, his reminiscences of men and events, made that one of the white-letter days of my life.  At Chickamauga he won his major-general’s commission.  On the anniversary of the battle he died.  I shall never forget his description of the fight—­so modest, yet graphic.  It is imprinted on my memory as the most glorious battle-picture words ever painted.  He thought the greatest calamity which could befall a man was to lose ambition.  I said to him, ’General, did you never in your earlier struggle have that feeling I have so often met with, when you would have compromised your future for a certainty, and if so, what?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ’I remember well when I would have been willing to exchange all the possibilities of my life for the certainty of a position as a successful teacher.’  Though he died neither a school principal nor college professor, and they seem humble achievements compared with what he did, his memory will instruct while time endures.

“His long and dreadful sickness lifted the roof from his house and family circle, and his relations as son, husband, and father stood revealed in the broadest sunlight of publicity.  The picture endeared him wherever is understood the full significance of that matchless word ‘Home.’  When he stood by the capitol just pronounced the President of the greatest and most powerful of republics, the exultation of the hour found its expression in a kiss