They killed two other Presidents, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor.  I know the physicians called the disease congestion of the lungs or liver, but the plain truth was that they were worried to death; they were trampled out of life by place-hunters.  Three Presidents sacrificed to this one demon are enough.  I urged Congress at the next session to start a work of presidential emancipation.  Four Presidents have recommended civil service reform, and it has amounted to little or nothing.  But this assassination I hoped would compel speedy and decisive action.

James A. Garfield was prepared for eternity.  He often preached the Gospel.  “I heard him preach, he preached for me in my pulpit,” a minister told me.  He preached once in Wall Street to an excited throng, after Lincoln was shot.  He preached to the wounded soldiers at Chickamauga.  He preached in the United States Senate, in speeches of great nobility.  When a college boy, camped on the mountains, he read the Scriptures aloud to his companions.  After he was shot, he declared that he trusted all in the Lord’s hand—­was ready to live or die.

“If the President die, what of his successor?” was the great question of the hour.  I did not know Mr. Arthur at that time, but I prophesied that Mr. Garfield’s policies would be carried out by his successor.

I consider President Garfield was a man with the most brilliant mind who ever occupied the White House.  He had strong health, a splendid physique, a fine intellect.  If Guiteau’s bullet had killed the President instantly, there would have been a revolution in this country.

He lingered amid the prayers of the nation, surrounded by seven of the greatest surgeons and physicians of the hour.  Then he passed on.  His son was preparing a scrap-book of all the kind things that had been said about his father, to show him when he recovered.  That was a tender forethought of one who knew how unjustly he had suffered the slanders of his enemies.  There was much talk about presidential inability, and in the midst of this public bickering Chester A. Arthur became president.  He took office, amid severe criticism.  I urged the appointment of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen to the President’s Cabinet, feeling that.  Mr. Arthur would have in this distinguished son of New Jersey, a devout, evangelical, Christian adviser.  In October I paid a visit, to Mr. Garfield’s home in Mentor, Ohio.  On the hat-rack in the hall was his hat, where he had left it, when the previous March he left for his inauguration in Washington.  I left that bereaved household with a feeling that a full explanation of this event must be adjourned to the next state of my existence.

The new President was gradually becoming, on all sides, the bright hope of our national future.  In after years I learned to know him and admire him.

In the period of transition that followed the President’s assassination we lost other good men.