failed to find employment. Some schools had already engaged teachers; and, where there was still a vacancy, the trustees thought him too young. He returned to his mother, completely discouraged, and greatly humiliated by the rebuffs he had met with. He made a resolution, that he would never again ask for a position of any kind. This resolution he faithfully kept; for every public place, which he afterwards held, came to him unsought.

Next morning, while still in the depths of despondency, he heard a man call to his mother from the road: "Widow Gaffield" (a local corruption of the name of Garfield), "where's your boy Jim? I wonder if he wouldn't like to teach our school at the Ledge?" James went out and found a neighbor from a district a mile away, where the school had been broken up for two Winters by the rowdyism of the big boys. He said, that he would like to try the school, but before deciding must consult his uncle, Amos Boynton. That evening there was a family-consultation. Uncle Amos pondering over the matter, finally said: "You go and try it. You will go into that school as the boy 'Jim' Gaffield; see that you come out as Mr. Garfield, the schoolmaster." The young man

mustered the school in the school-room, after a hard tussle with the bully of the district, who resented a flogging and tried to brain the teacher with a billet of wood. No problem in his after life ever took so much absorbing thought and study,

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as that of making the Ledge school successful. He devised all sorts of plans for making study interesting to the children; joined in the out-door sports of the big boys; read aloud evenings to the people, with whom he boarded; and won the hearts of old and young. Before spring he won the reputation of being the best schoolmaster, who had ever taught at the Ledge. His wages were "twelve dollars a month and found," and he "boarded round" in the families of the pupils.

He returned to the Seminary in the spring (1850), and found that the principal, Mr. Branch, had left and was succeeded by Spencer J. Fowler, while John B. Beach had stepped into the shoes of the crusty, iconoclastic grammarian, Mrs. Branch. During this third term at the Seminary, he and his cousin Henry "boarded themselves," and put in practice Wright's dietary scheme. At the end of six weeks the boys found that their expenses for food had been just thirty-one cents per week apiece. Henry thought that they were living too poorly for good health. They therefore agreed to increase their outlay to fifty cents per week apiece. James had, up to this time, looked upon a college course as wholly beyond his reach; but he met a college graduate, who told him that he was mistaken in supposing, that only the sons of rich parents were able to take such a course. A poor boy could get through, he said, but it would take a long time and very hard work. The

usual time was four years in preparatory studies and four in the regular college course. James thought, that, by working part of the time to earn money, he could get through in twelve years. He then resolved to bend all his energies to getting a college education. From this resolution he never swerved a hair's breadth. Until it was accomplished, it was the one overmastering idea of his life. The tenacity and single-heartedness, with which he clung to it, and the sacrifices, which he made to realize it, unquestionably exerted a powerful influence in moulding and solidifying his character.

In March of this year, after having exercised his full freedom in reaching conclusions, he joined the Church of the Disciples, who are also known as "Campbellites," and was baptized in a little stream that flows into the Chagrin River. His conversion was brought about by a quiet, sweet-tempered man, who held a series of meetings in the schoolhouse near the Garfield homestead, and told in the plainest manner, and with the most straightforward earnestness, the story of the Gospel. The creed, which he professed, and which was then held by few, but now by about half a million persons, is as follows:

1. We call ourselves Christians or Disciples.

2. We believe in God the Father.

3. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and our only Saviour. We regard the divinity of Christ as the fundamental truth in the Christian system.

4. We believe in the Holy Spirit, both as an agency in conversion and as an indweller in the heart of the Christian. 5. We accept both the Old and the New Testament Scriptures as the inspired word of God.

6. We believe in the future punishment of the wicked and the future reward of the righteous.

7. We believe that the Deity is a prayer-hearing and prayeranswering God.

8. We observe the institution of the Lord's Supper on every Lord's Day. To this table it is our practice neither to invite nor to debar. We say it is the Lord's Supper for all the Lord's children.

9. We plead for the union of all God's people on the Bible and the Bible alone.

10. The Bible is our only creed.

11. We maintain that all the ordinances of the Gospel should be observed as they were in the days of the Apostles.

When the Summer came, he resumed his old trade, and was happy among the hammers and planes, the saws and chisels. He earned a fair amount, and returned in the Fall to the Seminary. During this Fall he entered a school of bookkeeping, penmanship and elocution, kept by Dr. Alonzo Harlow, and located at Chagrin Falls, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Garfield was the doctor's janitor, paying his tuition in that manner, and at the same time earning his board of a neighboring farmer by doing chores about the place. Here he took his first lesson in elocution, and received the first real encouragement to fit himself for public life.

In the Winter he taught a village-school in Warrensville, receiving sixteen dollars a month

and board. One of his pupils desired to study algebra. Although Garfield had never taught this branch of mathematics, he bought a text-book, studied nights, kept ahead of his pupil, and finished his instruction without a suspicion on the part of the pupil that the master was not an expert in the science. This was Garfield's last experience in Chester or its neighborhood. Writing many years afterward of the time spent here, he said:

I remember with great satisfaction the work, which was accomplished for me at Chester. It marked the most decisive change in my life. While there I formed a definite purpose and plan to complete a college course. It is a great point gained, when a young man makes up his mind to devote several years to the accomplishment of a definite work. With the educational facilities now afforded in our country, no young man, who has good health and is master of his own actions, can be excused for not obtaining a good education. Poverty is very inconvenient, but it is a fine spur to activity, and may be made a rich blessing.

In the Spring he went with his mother to visit relatives in Muskingum County, and rode for the first time in a railroad train. The Cleveland and Columbus Railroad had just been opened; and he went to Columbus from Orange. Hon. Gamaliel Kent, then representative from Geauga, showed him over the State-capital and the legislative halls. From Columbus Garfield and his mother went by stage to Zanesville, and then floated eighteen miles in a skiff down the Muskingum River to their destination. While there, James