“The effect was tremendous.  The-crowd stood rooted to the ground with awe, gazing at the motionless orator, and thinking of God and the security of the Government in that hour.  As the boiling waters subside and settle to the sea, when some strong wind beats it down, so the tumult of the people sank and became still.  All took it as a divine omen.  It was a triumph of eloquence, inspired by the moment, such as falls to but one man’s lot, and that but once in a century.  The genius of Webster, Choate, Everett, Seward, never reached it.  What might have happened had the surging and maddened mob been let loose, none can tell.  The man for the crisis was on the spot, more potent than Napoleon’s guns at Paris.  I inquired what was his name.

“The answer came in a low whisper, ‘It is General Garfield, of Ohio.’”

It was a most dramatic scene, and a wonderful exhibition of the power of one man of intellect over a furious mob.

How, would the thrilling intensity of the moment have been increased, had some prophet, standing beside the inspired speaker, predicted that a little more than sixteen years later he who had calmed the crowd would himself fall a victim to violence, while filling the same high post as the martyred Lincoln.  Well has it been said that the wildest dream of the romancer pales beside the solemn surprise of the Actual.  Not one among the thousands there assembled, not the speaker himself, would have considered such a statement within the range of credibility.  Alas, that it should have been!—­that the monstrous murder of the good Lincoln should have been repeated in these latter days, and the nation have come a second time a mourner!

Will it be believed that Garfield’s arrival and his speech had been quite accidental, though we must also count it as Providential, since it stayed the wild excesses of an infuriated mob.  He had only arrived from Washington that morning, and after breakfast had strolled through the crowded streets, in entire ignorance of the great gathering at the Exchange building.

He turned down Broadway, and when he saw the great concourse of people, he kept on, to learn what had brought them together.  Butler was speaking when he arrived, and a friend who recognized him beckoned him to come up there, above the heads of the multitude.

When he heard the wild cries for “Vengeance!” and noticed the swaying, impassioned movements of the crowd, he saw the danger that menaced the public order, and in a moment of inspiration he rose, and with a gesture challenged the attention of the crowd.  What he said he could not have told five minutes afterward.  “I only know,” he said afterward, “that I drew the lightning from that crowd, and brought it back to reason.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

GARFIELD AS A LAWYER.

In the crowded activities of Garfield’s life, my readers may possibly have forgotten that he was a lawyer, having, after a course of private study during his presidency of Hiram College, been admitted to the bar, in 1861, by the Supreme Court of Ohio.  When the war broke out he was about to withdraw from his position as teacher, and go into practice in Cleveland; but, as a Roman writer has expressed it, “Inter arma silent leges.”  So law gave way to arms, and the incipient lawyer became a general.