“You’ll see,” answered his sister, somewhat evasively, though Thomas knew by her appearance that there was real significance in what she said.

“Well, what’s up now?” added Thomas, sure that some project was in her head.

“Nothing is up, except Jimmy; he will be up—on my back,” answered the brave girl, who had resolved to spare her lively little brother’s legs by carrying him to school.

“Carry Jimmy to school!” exclaimed Thomas; “you will be more tired than he will be to walk. It is a bigger load than our great-grandfather carried in the Revolutionary war. You’ll get sick of that.”

“It won’t be the first thing I am sick of that I have done,” was all the girl’s reply.

We did not mean to tell this resolute maid’s unpoetical name; but we desire to say something about her, and so we must tell her name. It was Mehetabel. The name was load enough to carry to school without adding the burden of Jimmy. Mehetabel was fifteen years old, just such a strapping girl as would grow up in the woods, among tall trees; but she did not merit such a name as that. It set upon her better at fifteen than it could have done in babyhood, undoubtedly. Just think of a baby bearing the name of Mehetabel! We have looked for its origin, and find that it belongs to the old Jewish dispensation, and ought to have been dumped into oblivion with its lumbering ceremonials. But, somehow, it slid over into the new dispensation, and after the lapse of eighteen hundred years and more it now confronts us in Ohio!

Well, the first day of school arrived, and Mehetabel took her two burdens—her name and brother—and trudged off to school. Jimmy was mightily pleased with his new mode of conveyance, and so were the whole family; and they made a jolly morning of it in starting off the pioneer troupe, who were only forty- six years distant from the White House. The log-cabin smiled as it had not smiled since that terrible day of sorrow of which we shall soon speak. Thomas was the happiest boy in Ohio on that blessed morning, although he did not know it; and he went to work with fresh vigour and determination, splendid fellow that he was. While the children are in school, and Thomas is driving work on the farm, and the good mother is having a lonely day in the cabin, with her spinning-wheel, we will stop to tell how this family came to be in the woods of Ohio, and add some definite information about the father.

In the year 1799 Thomas Garfield was a farmer in Worcester, Otsego County, N.Y. That year a son was born to him, to whom he gave the name of Abram. Thirty-two years afterwards, this son Abram became the father of James A. Garfield.

Before Abram was two years old, his father suddenly sickened and died, leaving his wife and several children penniless—a sorrow that was singularly repeated in the life of Abram, who died, as we shall see, when James was less than two years of age, leaving his wife and four children to battle with the hardships of life. It was not possible for Abram’s mother to keep the family together, and provide for so many mouths; so a neighbour, James Stone, took Abram into his family, and reared him as one of his own children.

When the lad was ten years old, Widow Ballou removed into the neighbourhood, from New Hampshire. Mrs. Ballou had a daughter, Eliza, about a year younger than Abram, a very bright, promising girl. Abram and Eliza became playmates, and thought very much of each other.

Eliza was fourteen years old when her mother conceived the idea of emigrating to Ohio, which was then the “Far West,” and great stories were told about its prolific soil and future wealth. Emigrants from New York, and also from the New England States, were removing thither in considerable numbers. James Ballou, her son, now a young man, saw emigrant waggons passing through New York, or starting from it, their destination being Ohio, and became more enthusiastic than his mother to go. At last she decided to remove thither, sold her little farm, packed her household goods into an emigrant waggon, and with her children started for the West. Abram was a lonely boy when Eliza left, and the two separated regretfully.