“That teacher was Chester A. Arthur, now President of the United States; the teacher of the primary department was his sister, now Mrs. Haynesworth, and the first of the three refractory boys was the writer.  When it was announced that our beloved teacher was to leave us, many tears were shed by his scholars, and as a slight token of our love, we presented him with an elegant volume of poems.”

CHAPTER XVII.

LIFE IN COLLEGE.

Probably young Garfield never passed two happier or more profitable years than at Williams College.  The Seminaries he had hitherto attended were respectable, but in the nature of things they could not afford the facilities which he now enjoyed.  Despite his years of study and struggle there were many things in which he was wholly deficient.  He had studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics, but of English literature he knew but little.  He had never had time to read for recreation, or for that higher culture which is not to be learned in the class-room.

In the library of Williams College he made his first acquaintance with Shakespeare, and we can understand what a revelation his works must have been to the aspiring youth.  He had abstained from reading fiction, doubting whether it was profitable, since the early days when with a thrill of boyish excitement he read “Sinbad the Sailor” and Marryatt’s novels.  After a while his views as to the utility of fiction changed.  He found that his mind was suffering from the solid food to which it was restricted, and he began to make incursions into the realm of poetry and fiction with excellent results.  He usually limited this kind of reading, and did not neglect for the fascination of romance those more solid works which should form the staple of a young man’s reading.

It is well known that among poets Tennyson was his favorite, so that in after years, when at fifteen minutes’ notice, on the first anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, he was called upon to move an adjournment of the House, as a mark of respect to the martyred President, he was able from memory to quote in his brief speech, as applicable to Lincoln, the poet’s description of some

  “Divinely gifted man,
  Whose life in low estate began,
  And on a simple village green,
    Who breaks his birth’s invidious bars,
  And grasped the skirts of happy chance,
  And breasts the blows of circumstance,
    And grapples with his evil stars;
  Who makes by force his merit known,
    And lives to clutch the golden keys
    To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
  And shape the whisper of the throne;
  And moving up from high to higher,
    Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
    The pillar of a people’s hope,
  The center of a world’s desire.”

I am only repeating the remark made by many when I call attention to the fitness of this description to Garfield himself.