CHAPTER VI.

W

GARFIELD AT WILLIAMS.

HEN Garfield reached Williams College, in June, 1854, he had about three hundred dollars, which he had saved while teaching at Hiram; and with this amount he hoped to get through the first year. The college year had not quite closed, a few weeks rcmained, which he utilized by attending the recitations of the sophomore class, in order to become familiar with the methods of the professors before testing his ability to pass the examinations of the junior year. He had a keen sense of his want of the advantages of society and general culture which the students with whom he came in contact had enjoyed all their lives, but his homely manners and Western garb did not subject him to any slights or mortifications. The spirit of the college was generous and manly. No student was estimated by the clothes he wore; no one was snubbed because he was poor. The intellectual force, originality and immense powers of study possessed by the new-comer from Ohio were soon recognized by his classmates, and he was shown. as much respect, cordiality and companionship as if he had been the son of a millionaire.

His old

mates recall him as a big young man, quite Ger man in appearance-so strong is good Saxon blood, after centuries of exile from the Saxon land-blonde and bearded, strong-limbed, serious, but sociable, and with the Western easy-going manners, ready wit and broad sympathy going out toward all his fellows. The boys called him "Old Gar," so readily did he assume the patriarchate of the college in the brief two years he was there. He boarded in club, and did not smoke or drink.

The beauty of the scenery around Mechanicsville made a strong impression upon his fancy. He had never seen mountains before. The spurs of the Green Hills, which reach down from Vermont and inclose the little college town in their arms, were to the young man from the monotonous landscapes of the Western Reserve a wonderful revelation of grandeur and beauty. He climbed Greylock and explored all the glens and valleys of the neighborhood.

The examination for entering the junior class was passed without trouble. Although self-taught, save for the help of his friend and companion in his studies, Miss Booth, his knowledge of the books prescribed was thorough. A long summer vacation followed his examination, and this time he employed in the college library, the first large collection of books he had ever seen. His absorption in the double work of teaching and fitting

himself for college had hitherto left him little time. for general reading, and the library opened a new world of profit and delight. He had never read a line of Shakespeare, save a few extracts in the school reading-books. From the whole range of fiction he had voluntarily shut himself off at eighteen, when he joined the church, having serious views of the business of life, and imbibing the notion, then almost universal among religious people in the country districts of the West, that novel reading was a waste of time, and, therefore, a simple, worldly sort of intellectual amusement. When turned loose in the college library, with weeks of leisure to range at will over its shelves, he began with Shakespeare, which he read through from cover to cover. Then he went to English history and poetry. Of the poets, Tennyson pleased him best, which is not to be wondered at, for the influence of the Laureate was then at its height. He learned whole poems by heart, and can repeat them now.

After he had been six or eight months at college, and had devoured an immense amount of serious reading, he began to suffer from intellectual dyspepsia. He found his mind was not assimilating what he read, and would often refuse to be held down to the printed page. Then he revised his notions about books of fiction, and concluded that romance is as valuable a part of intellectual food as salad of a dinner. He pre

scribed for himself one novel a month, and on this medicine his mind speedily recuperated and got back all its old elasticity. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales were the first novels he read, and afterward Walter Scott. An English classmate introduced him to the works of Dickens and Thackeray. He formed a habit in those days of making notes while he read of everything he did not clearly understand, such as historical references, mythological allusions, technical terms, etc. These notes he would take time to look up afterward in the library, so as to leave nothing obscure on his mind concerning the books he absorbed. The thoroughness he displayed in his work in after life was thus begun at that early period, and applied to every subject he took hold of. The ground his mind traversed he carefully cleared and plowed before leaving it for fresh fields.

Garfield studied Latin and Greek and took up German as an elective study. One year at Williams completed his classical studies, on which he was far advanced before he came there. German he carried on successfully until he could read Goethe and Schiller readily and acquired considerable fluency in the conversational use of the language. He entered with zeal into the literary work of the college, was a vigorous debater and a member of the Philologian Society, of which he was president in 1855-56. The influence of the mind and character of Dr. Hopkins

was seriously felt in shaping the direction of Garfield's thought and his views of life. He often says that the good president rose like a sun before him, and enlightened his whole mental and moral nature. His preaching and teaching were a constant inspiration to the young Ohio student and he became the centre of his college life, the object of his hero-worship.

At the end of the fall term of 1854, Garfield enjoyed a winter vacation of two months which he spent in North Pownal, Vt., teaching a writing class in the same school-house where a year before Chester A. Arthur was the principal. Garfield wrote a broad, handsome hand, a hand that was strongly individual, and the envy of the boys and girls who tried to imitate it.

At the end of the college year in June, Garfield returned home to see his mother, who was then living with a daughter at Solon. His money was exhausted and he had to adopt one of two plans, either to borrow enough to take him through to graduation at the end of the next year or set to work as a teacher until he earned the requisite continuity of his col

amount; and so break the lege course. He, however, did neither, but insured his life for eight hundred dollars, his brother Thomas undertaking to furnish the funds on instalments, but, being eventually unable, the obligation was assumed by Dr. Robinson, of Hiram, who advanced the money and took the insurance policy as security..