Young Garfield Tries the Canal-Thirteen Duckings on the First Trip, and one Fight-The First Victory. Notwithstanding his poor success with "the Captain," young Garfield determined to persevere, and the very first canal-boat he visited wanted a driver, and he got the place. The General avers that, by actual count, he fell into the canal thirteen times on the first trip. Knowing nothing of the art of swimming, he came very near drowning. He worked faithfully and well, however, and at the end of his first round trip he was promoted from driver to bowsman. On his first trip to Beaver, in this new capacity, he had his first fight. He was standing on the deck, with the setting pole against his shoulder. Some feet away stood Dave, a great, good-natured boatman, and a firm friend of the young General. The boat gave a lurch, the pole slipped from the youth's shoulder, and flew in the direction of Dave. a "Look out, Dave!" called Garfield; but the pole was there first, and struck Dave a severe blow in the ribs. Garfield expressed his sorrow, but it was of no use. Dave turned upon the luckless boy with curses, and threatened to thrash him. Garfield knew he was innocent even of carelessness. The threat of a flogging from a heavy man of 35 roused the hot Garfield blood. Dave rushed upon him with his head down, like an enraged bull. As he came on, Garfield sprang one side and dealt him a powerful blow just back of and under the left ear. Dave went to the bottom of the boat with his head between two beams, and his now heated foe went after him, seized him by the throat, and lifted the same clenched hand for another blow. "Pound the blamed fool to death, Jim," called the appreciative Captain. "If he haint no more sense to get mad at accidents he orto die;" and, as the youth hesitated, "Why don't you strike? Blame me, if I'll interfere." He could not; the man was down, helpless in his power. Dave expressed regret at his rage. Garfield gave him his hand, and they were better friends than ever. The victory gave the young man much prestige among the canal men. The idea that a boy could thrash Dave was something that the roughs could not understand. Off the Tow-Path.-Why Young Garfield Abandoned the Canal.-A Providential Escape that Set Him to Thinking and Sent Him Home. The General says that two causes were instrumental in causing him finally to abandon the canal. One was his mother, and the other was the ague cake in his side. He had worked but a short time when he began to feel the ague in his system, and finally it assumed a very serious form. His many falls into the water, and the thorough wetting which followed increased his disease, and finally one especially heavy fall led him to reason quite fully over the matter. It was night, and in the darkness he grasped for something to draw himself out of the water. As luck would have it he chanced to reach thedrag rope of the boat. Hand over hand he grasped the rope, and finally he drew himself up. He thought of his mother, and how he had left her with the intention of going upon the lake, and how she still believed he was there. The next day's warm sun dried his clothes, but he was sicker than ever with the chills, and he determined upon reaching Cleveland to go and visit his mother and lay off long enough to get well. It was after dark when he approached the home of the widow and orphans. Coming quietly near he heard her voice in prayer within. vent prayer went on. He bowed and listened as the ferHe heard her pray for him. When the voice ceased he softly raised the latch and entered. Her prayer was answered. Not till that solemn time did he know that his going away had crushed her. A Trying Ordeal-In the Hands of the Doctors--Melting Down an "Ague After the terrible ducking and narrow escape that closed the labors of young Garfield on the canal, he was at once prostrated with the "ague cake," as the hardness of the left side is popularly called. One of the old school M.D.'s salivated him, and for several awful months he lay on the bed with a board so adjusted as to conduct the flow of saliva from his mouth while the cake was dissolving under the influence of calomel, as the doctor said! Nothing but the indissoluble constitution given him by his father carried him through. However it fared with that obdurate cake, his passion for the sea survived, and he intended to return to the canal. The wise, sagacious love of the mother won. She took counsel of other helps. During the dreary months with tender watchfulness she cared for him. She trusted in his noble nature; she trusted in good faith that, although he constantly talked of carrying out his old plans, he would abandon them. Not for years did he know the agony these words cost her. She merely said, in her sweet, quiet way: ་ James, you're sick. If you return to the canal, I fear you will be taken down again. I have been thinking it over. It seems to me you had better go to school this spring, and then, with a term in the fall, you may be able to teach in the winter. It you can teach winters and want to go on the canal or lake summers, you will have employment the year round." Wise woman that she was, in his broken condition it did not seem a bad plan. While he revolved it, she went on: "Your money is now all gone, but your brother Thomas and I will be able to raise $17 for you to start to school on, and you can perhaps get along, after that is gone, upon your own resources." He took the advice and the money,-the only fund ever contributed by others to him either in fitting or passing through college,-and went to The Geauga, a seminary at Chester. In speaking of this longing for the sea, the General said, half regretfully: "But even now, at times, the old feeling, (the longing for the sea) comes back," and, walking across the room, he turned, with a flashing eye: "I tell you I would rather now command a fleet in a great naval battle than to do anything else on this earth. The sight of a ship often fills 'me with a strong fascination, and when upon the water, and my fellow-landsmen are in the agonies of sea-sickness, I am as tranquil as when walking the land in the serenest weather." And so the mother conquered. When a thirst for knowledge was once engendered in the youth, the mother stood in no danger of losing him. But during all those years of education, there were obstacles of great magnitude to be overcome, poverty to be struggled against, and victories to be won. Garfield's School Days-He Attends a High School-Takes His Frying-pan Along-The Old Old Story of What Grit Will Do. Up to the time of young Garfield's canal experience he seemed to have cherished little ambition for anything beyond the prospects offered by the laborious life he had entered. But it happened that one of the winter schools was taught by a promising young man named Samuel Bates. He had attended a high school in an adjacent township, known as the "Geauga Seminary," and with the proselyting spirit common to young men in the backwoods, who were beginning to taste the pleasures of education, he was very anxious to take back several new students with him. Garfield listened to Mr. Bates, and was tempted. He had intended to become a sailor on the lakes, but he was yet too ill to carry out this plan, and so he finally resolved to attend the high school one term, and postpone sailing till the next fall. That resolution made a scholar, a Major General, a Senator-elect, and a Presidential candidate out of him, instead of a sailor before the mast on a Lake Erie schooner. The boy never dreamed of what the man would be. Early in March, 1849, young Garfield reached Chester (the site of the Geauga Seminary) in company with his cousin and another young man from his village. They car ried with them frying-pans and dishes as well as their few school books. They rented a room in an old, unpainted frame house near the academy, and went to work. Garfield bought the second Algebra he had ever seen, and began to study it. English Grammar, Natural Philosophy, and Arithmetic were the list of his studies. His mother had scraped together a little sum of money to aid him at the start, which she gave him with her blessing when he left his humble home. After that he |
