“I knew I was safe. It was the financial question that troubled the old gentleman, and I knew that would be overcome when Henry got to teaching, and could earn his money himself. He would then be so far along, too, that he could fight his own battles. He came all right the next fall, and, after finishing at Hiram, graduated at an Eastern college.”

“Well, how did you manage the campaign for capturing the other young man?” Garfield was asked.

“Well, that was a different case. I knew that this youth was going to leave mainly for financial reasons also, but I understood his father well enough to know that the matter must be managed with exceeding delicacy. He was a man of very strong religious convictions, and I thought he might be approached from that side of his character; so when I got the letter of the son, telling me, in the saddest language that he could master, that he could not come back to school any more, but must be content to be simply a farmer, much as it was against his inclination, I revolved the matter in my mind, and decided to send an appointment to preach in the little country church where the old gentleman attended. I took for a subject the parable of the talents, and in the course of my discourse dwelt specially upon the fact that children were the talents which had been entrusted to parents, and if these talents were not increased and developed, there was a fearful trust neglected. After church I called upon the parents of the boy I was besieging, and I saw that something was weighing upon their minds. At length the subject of the discourse was taken up and gone over again, and in due course the young man himself was discussed, and I gave my opinion that he should by all means be encouraged and assisted in taking a thorough course of study. I gave my opinion that there was nothing more important to the parent than to do all in his power for the child. The next term the young man again appeared upon Hiram Hill, and remained pretty continuously till graduation.”

He was wonderfully magnetic. He never failed to win students to himself. President Hinsdale says of him:

“Naturally, Garfield, the teacher, drew his pupils to himself with extraordinary power. Never have I seen such devotion to another teacher. An old Hiram student, now holding a responsible office in the public schools of Cleveland, speaking of the old times before Garfield went to college, says in a private letter: ‘Then began to grow up in me an admiration and love for Garfield that has never abated, and the like of which I have never known. A bow of recognition or a single word from him was to me an inspiration.’ And such would be the general testimony. In all this there was method; not the method of crafty art, as the cynical might say, but the method of nature, the method of a great mind and noble heart. I take my leave of this Hiram teacher with affirming my conviction that, other things being equal, Garfield has never been greater than he was in Hiram from 1857 to 1861. He left the quiet of the academy for the roar of the field and the forum at the age of thirty, but not until he had demonstrated his fitness for the highest educational work and honours.”

The following facts and incidents will illustrate some of his methods and qualities as a teacher.

One day a pupil made a sad failure in the class,—at least, on a portion of the lesson,—when Garfield roguishly pointed to a soiled place in one corner of the recitation room, where the water had trickled through the plastering and run down upon the wall.

“Look there,” he said, laughing at the same time, and eliciting a smile from each member of the class. That was all he said; but the rebuke was keen and sharp, coming in that way from him. Such was his usual method. Occasionally, however, when he perceived a really rebellious spirit that meant mischief, he was severe and withering in his method of treatment.

He assigned a certain task to a student at one time, when the latter said:

“I doubt whether I can do it. I do not think I am equal to it.”

“Not equal to it?”