Yet it had all come true.  Nowhere, perhaps, but in America could such a thing have happened, and even here it seldom happens that such an upward stride is made in so short a time.

After all, however, the important question to consider is, “What sort of a college president did this humble canal-boy, who counted it promotion when he was elected a janitor and bell-ringer, become?”

For information upon this point, we go to one of his pupils, Rev. I.L.  Darsie, of Danbury, Conn., who writes as follows: 

“I attended the Western Reserve Institute when Garfield was principal, and I recall vividly his method of teaching.  He took very kindly to me, and assisted me in various ways, because I was poor, and was janitor of the buildings, and swept them out in the morning and built the fires, as he had done only six years before, when he was a pupil in the same college.  He was full of animal spirits, and used to run out on the green every day and play cricket with his scholars.  He was a tall, strong man, but dreadfully awkward.  Every now and then he would get a hit, and he muffed his ball and lost his hat as a regular thing.[A] He was left-handed, too, and that made him seem all the clumsier.  But he was most powerful and very quick, and it was easy for us to understand how it was that he had acquired the reputation of whipping all the other mule-drivers on the canal, and of making himself the hero of that thoroughfare, when he followed its tow-path, only ten years earlier.

[Footnote A:  I have seen it somewhere stated that when a Congressman at Washington he retained his interest in the game of base-ball, and always was in attendance when it was possible, at a game between two professional clubs.]

“No matter how old the pupils were, Garfield always called us by our first names, and kept himself on the most intimate terms with all.  He played with us freely, and we treated him out of the class-room just about as we did one another.  Yet he was a most strict disciplinarian, and enforced the rules like a martinet.  He combined an affectionate and confiding manner with respect for order in a most successful manner.  If he wanted to speak to a pupil, either for reproof or approbation, he would generally manage to get one arm around him, and draw him close up to him.  He had a peculiar way of shaking hands, too, giving a twist to your arm, and drawing you right up to him.  This sympathetic manner has helped him to advancement.  When I was janitor, he used sometimes to stop me, and ask my opinion about this and that, as if seriously advising with me.  I can see now that my opinion could not have been of any value, and that he probably asked me partly to increase my self-respect and partly to show that he felt an interest in me.  I certainly was his friend all the firmer for it.

“I remember once asking him what was the best way to pursue a certain study.

“‘Use several text-books,’ he answered.  ’Get the views of different authors as you advance.  In that way you can plow a deeper furrow.  I always study in that way.’