“In doing so you may sacrifice your own prospects.”

“I hope not.  At any rate, my mind is made up.”

“Oh, well, in that case I will say no more.  I know that if your mind is made up, you are bound to go.  Only, years hence you will think of my warning.”

“At any rate,” said Garfield, cordially, “I shall bear in mind the interest you have shown in me.  You may be right—­I admit that—­but I feel that it is my duty to go.”

I doubt whether any man of great powers can permanently bury himself, no matter how obscure the position which he chooses.  Sooner or later the world will find him out, and he will be lifted to his rightful place.  When General Grant occupied a desk in the office of a lawyer in St. Louis, and made a precarious living by collecting bills, it didn’t look as if Fame had a niche for him; but occasion came, and lifted him to distinction.  So I must confess that the young graduate seemed to be making a mistake when, turning his back upon Williams College, he sought the humble institution where he had taught, as a pupil-teacher, two years before, and occupied a place as instructor, with an humble salary.  But even here there was promotion for him.  A year later, at the age of twenty-six, he was made president of the institution.  It was not, perhaps, a lofty position, for though Hiram Institute now became Hiram College, it was not a college in the New England sense, but rather a superior academy.

Let us pause a minute and see what changes have taken place in ten years.

At the age of sixteen Jimmy Garfield was glad to get a chance to drive a couple of mules on the tow-path of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal.  The ragged, homespun boy had disappeared.  In his place we find James A. Garfield, A.B., president of a Western college—­a man of education and culture.  And how has this change been brought about!  By energy, perseverance, and a resolute purpose—­a soul that poverty could not daunt, an ambition which shrank from no hardship, and no amount of labor.  They have been years of toil, for it takes time to transform a raw and ignorant country lad into a college president; but the toil has not harmed him—­the poverty has not cramped him, nor crippled his energies.  “Poverty is very inconvenient,” he said on one occasion, in speaking of those early years, “but it is a fine spur to activity, and may be made a rich blessing.”

The young man now had an assured income; not a large one, but Hiram was but an humble village.  No fashionable people lived there.  The people were plain in their tastes, and he could live as well as the best without difficulty.  He was employed in a way that interested and pleased him, and but one thing seemed wanting.  His heart had never swerved from the young lady with whom he first became acquainted at Geauga, to whom he was more closely drawn at Hiram, and to whom now for some years he had been betrothed.  He felt that he could now