CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE LESSONS OF HIS LIFE.

Probably the nearest and closest friend of Garfield, intellectually speaking, was his successor in the presidency of Hiram College, B.A.  Hinsdale.  If any one understood the dead President it was he.  For many years they corresponded regularly, exchanging views upon all topics that interested either.  They would not always agree, but this necessarily followed from the mental independence of each.  To Mr. Hinsdale we turn for a trustworthy analysis of the character and intellectual greatness of his friend, and this he gives us in an article published in the N.Y. Independent of Sept. 29, 1881: 

“First of all, James A. Garfield had greatness of nature.  Were I limited to one sentence of description, it would be:  He was a great-natured man.  He was a man of strong and massive body.  A strong frame, broad shoulders, powerful vital apparatus, and a massive head furnished the physical basis of his life.  He was capable of an indefinite amount of work, both physical and mental.  His intellectual status was equally strong and massive.  He excelled almost all men both in the patient accumulation of facts and in bold generalization.  He had great power of logical analysis, and stood with the first in rhetorical exposition.  He had the best instincts and habits of the scholar.  He loved to roam in every field of knowledge.  He delighted in the creations of the imagination—­poetry, fiction, and art.  He loved the deep things of philosophy.  He took a keen interest in scientific research.  He gathered into his storehouse the facts of history and politics, and threw over the whole the life and power of his own originality.

“The vast labors that he crowded into those thirty years—­labors rarely equaled in the history of men—­are the fittest gauge of his physical and intellectual power.  His moral character was on a scale equally large and generous.  His feelings were delicate, his sympathies most responsive, his sense of justice keen.  He was alive to delicate points of honor.  No other man whom I have known had such heart.  He had great faith in human nature and was wholly free from jealousy and suspicion.  He was one of the most helpful and appreciative of men.  His largeness of views and generosity of spirit were such that he seemed incapable of personal resentment.  He was once exhorted to visit moral indignation upon some men who had wronged him deeply.  Fully appreciating the baseness of their conduct, he said he would try, but added:  ’I am afraid some one will have to help me.’