crushed other hearts. It was well that his baby-spirit could not take in the sorrow of that hour; there was anguish enough in that stricken home without adding his touching wail thereto.

The neighbours came, what few there were (only four or five families within a radius of ten miles), and sympathized and wept with the widow and fatherless ones. With their assistance the lifeless remains were enclosed in a rough box, and borne out through the low doorway, and buried in a corner of the wheat-field, near by. No sermon, no remarks, no prayers, except the silent prayers that went up for grace from aching hearts! Reader, you will never know, you never can know, nobody can ever know, except by the dreadful experience, what the death and burial of a loved one is in the wilderness, amid the gloom and silence of primeval forests. That bereaved widow still lives, and after the lapse of nearly fifty years she bears the marks of that great sorrow. A kind Providence that “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb” has wonderfully sustained her, and she has found her Saviour to be as “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Still the brow of almost eighty years is furrowed by the severity of that affliction.

An incident should be recorded here. It occurred a short time before Mr. Garfield’s death; and he was reading a volume of Plutarch’s “Lives,” with James in his lap. The latter could speak the words, “papa,” “mamma,” and others. “Say Plutarch,” said his father. James repeated it very distinctly. “Say it again,” continued Mr. Garfield. James repeated it plainly, as before, and continued to repeat it. Looking up to his wife, Mr. Garfield remarked, with a true father’s love and pride, “Eliza, this boy will be a scholar some day!”

Winter was approaching; and winter in the wildernes, especially when the stalwart arm upon which loved ones depend for support and defence is palsied in death, is not calculated to dispel gloom from a dwelling. Could human experience be more dreary than when a woman is left a widow, alone with her children, in a wilderness swept by wintry storms; and that affliction intensified by extreme poverty, so that economy and careful planning are needful to keep the wolf of hunger from the door? What a winter it was! The snow lay deep and heavy upon the earth, burying the sacred mound in the corner of the wheat-field out of sight, and the high winds moaned through the naked forests as if wailing for the dead. The howl of wolves and the cry of panthers never sounded so terrible as they did during those long, desolate, wintry nights. The children, realizing the loneliness of their situation, now that their strong protector was dead, would lie awake at night to listen tremblingly to the howls and cries of these hungry animals, at the very door of their cabin. Sometimes it seemed to them that the panthers knew that their courageous father was lying dead in the wheat-field, and so they ventured to come to the very door to moan and cry, as famishing children cry for bread. Baby James, however, slept on, oblivious alike to the sorrows and perils of the hour. God was keeping him against the night of national danger, when he would listen to the yell of the wolves of plunder at the door of the republic. That winter, alone in the almost pathless forest, with the warring elements and beasts of prey uniting to make desolation more desolate, could not have had more sad thoughts, bitter tears, hours of loneliness, and blasted hopes, crowded into it than were the natural outcome of the direful situation.

It seemed to the weary ones that spring would never return; but it did, after a long, never-to-be-forgotten winter. And spring swept the snow and ice, and the streams ran singing again, and the dead things of the field and forest returned to life, save only the dead in the corner of the wheat-field. There was no resurrection there; and so hope was not revived in the cabin, and a gloomy outlook made even spring- time sad. There was no money in the house, and there was a debt on the farm. Food, also, was running low; and the widowed mother might hear her children cry for bread. What could she do? Leaving the children still at school, we will continue the story of her sufferings.