driver to bowsman, he was accorded the proud privilege of steering the boat instead of steering the mules.

By actual count during his first trip in his new position he fell overboard fourteen times. This was serious. The malaria of the canal region would in all probability have taken hold of his system in due time anyhow, but these frequent baths greatly helped it. He could not swim a stroke, and aid to fish him out was not always forthcoming. One dark and rainy midnight as the EVENING STAR was leaving one of those long reaches of slack water which abounded in the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal the boy was called out of his berth to take his turn in tending bow-line. Bundling out of bed, his eyes only half opened, he took his place on the narrow platform below the bow deck and began uncoiling a rope to steady the boat through a lock it was approaching. Sleepily and slowly he unwound the coil till it knotted and caught in a narrow cleft in the edge of the deck. He gave it a sudden pull, but it held fast, then another and a stronger pull and it gave way, but sent him over the bow of the EVENING STAR into the water. Down he went into the dark night and still darker water and the EVENING STAR glided on to bury him among the fishes. No human help was near; God only could save him and He only by a miracle. So the boy thought as he went down saying the prayer his mother had

Seizing it, hand over deck and was again Another kink had proved his salvation.

taught him. Instinctively clutching the rope, he sank below the surface, but then it tightened in his grasp and held firmly. hand he drew himself up on a live boy among the living. caught in another crevice and Was it the prayer or the love of his praying mother that saved him? The boy did not know but long after the boat had passed the lock he stood there in his dripping clothes pondering the question.

Coiling the rope, he tried to throw it again into the crevice, but it had lost the knack of kinking. Many times he tried-six hundred it is said—and then set down and reflected: "I have thrown this rope six hundred times, I might throw it ten times as many without its catching. Ten times six hundred are six thousand, so there were six thousand chances against my life. Against such odds Providence alone could have saved it. Providence, therefore, thinks it worth saving, and if that's so I won't throw it away on a canal boat. I'll go home, get an education, and become a man.'

Straightway he acted on the resolution, and not long after stood before his mother's log cottage in the Cuyahoga Wilderness. It was late at night. The stars were out, and the moon was down, but by the firelight that came through the window, he saw his mother kneeling before an open book, which lay on a chair in the corner. She was read

ing, but her eyes were off the page looking up to the Invisible:

"Oh turn unto me, and have mercy upon me! Give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save the son of Thy handmaid!”

Then she read what sounded like a prayer, but this is all the boy remembered, as he for the first time comprehended that his departure had crushed her.

He opened the door, put his arm about her neck, and his head upon her bosom. What words he said we do not know, but there, by her side, he gave back to God the life which He had given. So, the mother's prayer was answered. So sprang up the seed which in toil and tears she had planted.

For a short time he remained at home, comforting his mother and endeavoring to reconcile her to his hopes of a sea-faring life. This he more than accomplished, and was just about to take his second departure, when the malaria took hold of him and he was seized in the vice-like grip of fever and ague. For six months his strong frame was shaken. He lay upon the bed, the "ague-cake" in his side. Tenderly, indefatigably, his mother nursed him during his days of suffering, which her care and his iron constitution, at last permitted him to overcome. He was still determined, however, to return to the canal, and thence to the lake and ocean. Mrs. Garfield well knew that any op

position would be useless, so she argued that he had better attend school, for a time, at least, until he was able to resume severe labor, and thus fit himself to teach during the winter months, when he could not sail. He reluctantly consented to his mother's wishes. So came about a great changea change that worked for Jim Garfield a wonderful, far-differing future than that which he had woven from his net of fancies, by the aid of the "Pirate's Own Book."

CHAPTER V.

INTER FOLIO FRUCTUS-FRUIT BETWEEN LEAVES.

U

P to this time, in our hero's life, there are no political impressions to record. The boy well remembers attending a political meeting in the ever-memorable Harrison campaign, but merely as a curiosity seeker. Nor is it to be recorded that he had any deep religious emotions. He went regularly, when at home, to the Disciples' meeting, first at Bentleyville, and later at the school-house near his home, where his Uncle Boynton had organized a congregation. The polemics of religion interested him deeply at that time, but his heart was not touched. He was familiar with Bible texts, and was often a formidable disputant. One day, when about fifteen, he was digging potatoes for Mr. Patrick, in Orange, and carrying them in a basket from the patch to the cellar. Near the cellar door sat a neighbor talking to the farmer's grown-up daughter about the merits of the sprinkling and immersion controversy, and arguing that sprinkling was baptism within the meaning of the Scriptures. James overheard him say that a drop was as good as a fountain. He stopped on his way to the field, and