“Asking why he bought his farm, he said he had been reading about metals, how you could draw them to a certain point a million times and not impair their strength, but if you passed that point once, you could never get them back.  ‘So,’ said he, ’I bought this farm to rest the muscles of my mind!’ Coming to two small wooden structures in the field, he talked rapidly of how his neighbors guessed he would do in Congress, but would not make much of a fist at farming, and then called my attention to his corn and buckwheat and other crops, and said that was a marsh, but he underdrained it with tile, and found spring-water flowing out of the bluff, and found he could get a five-foot fall, and with pumps of a given dimension, a water-dam could throw water back eighty rods to his house, and eighty feet above it.  ‘But,’ said he, in his jocularly, impressive manner, ’I did my surveying before I did my work.’”

This is certainly a pleasant picture of a great man, who has not lost his simplicity of manner, and who seems unconscious of his greatness—­in whom the love of humanity is so strong that he reaches out a cordial hand to all of his kind, no matter how humble, and shows the warmest interest in all.

Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, was among the speakers at the memorial meeting in Terre Haute, and in the course of his remarks, said:  “I knew James A. Garfield well, and, except on the political field, we had strong sympathies together.  It is nearly eighteen years since we first met, and during that period I had the honor to serve seven years in the House of Representatives with him.

“The kindness of his nature and his mental activity were his leading traits.  In all his intercourse with men, women, and children, no kinder heart ever beat in human breast than that which struggled on till 10.30 o’clock Monday night, and then forever stood still.  There was a light in his face, a chord in his voice, and a pressure in his hand, which were full of love for his fellow-beings.  His manners were ardent and demonstrative with those to whom he was attached, and he filled the private circle with sunshine and magnetic currents.  He had the joyous spirits of boyhood and the robust intellectuality of manhood more perfectly combined than any other I ever knew.  Such a character was necessarily almost irresistible with those who knew him personally, and it accounts for that undying hold which, under all circumstances, bound his immediate constituents to him as with hooks of steel.  Such a nature, however, always has its dangers as well as its strength and its blessings.  The kind heart and the open hand never accompany a suspicious, distrustful mind.  Designing men mark such a character for their own selfishness, and Gen. Garfield’s faults—­for he had faults, as he was human—­sprang more from this circumstance than from all others combined.  He was prompt and eager to respond to the wishes of those he esteemed his friends, whether inside or outside of his own political party.  That he made some mistakes in his long, busy career is but repeating the history of every generous and obliging man who has lived and died in public life.  They are not such, however, as are recorded in heaven, nor will they mar or weaken the love of his countrymen.