PRESIDENT GAR FIELD'S EARLY LIFE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 439, 9 September 1881, Page 19

PRESIDENT GAR FIELD'S EARLY LIFE.

The Welcome gives the following interesting sketch of the early life of President Garfield :—: — James A. Garfield, who has been recently called, amidst the acclamations of bis countrymen, to occupy the position of President of the United States, has ripen from a lowly origin to his present lofty station. H<* comes of New England Ancestry, being ninth in direct descent from Edward Garfield, who emigrated from the Welsh border to Massachusetts in 163(5. These Garfields were tillers of the soil, sturdy, independent, God-fearing men. Abiam Garfield (father of the subject of this article) removed with his wife to North-eastern Ohio soon after their marriage. But of the future President's mother we must say a word or two. Her maiden name was Eliza Ballon ; she was of Huguenot descent, and many of her kith and kin were preachers ; others of the race have been distinguished as lawyers, politicians, or soldiers. From his father J. A. Garfield inherited a large brain and a robust manly fratue, but it is his mother's personality and principles that have moulded his character and shaped his career. To her influence be owes the untiring energy and patient courage that have enabled him to Bubdue obstacles which to most would have seemed insuimountable. Her portrait shows fine regular features ; a high, full forehead ; eerene, spiritual eyes, in whose clear depth?, as well as in the firm lines about the mouth, an intensity of energy is manifest ; the whole noble countenance is irradiated by a placid smile. It is the face of a woman who has hoped and feared and struggled ; one to whom life has been a stern conflict culminating in victory. Abram Gai field bought a tract of eighty acres of primeval forest in Orange Township, Cuyahoga county, "and in the midst of it he built a lough log-hou&e, with a good deal of mud

about it. It measured some thirty feet by twenty ; there was a floor of hewn deal, a roof of oak clapboards, a plank door swinging on three stout iron hinges, and three small windows. Here, on November 10th, 1831, James Abram Garfield, future Presidentof the United States, first saw the light. He was the youngest of four children, and before he was two years old his father died. The widow and her little ones got somehow through a terrible winter, when the wolves were howling outside the cabin. Fifty acres of the land were parted with. The eldest boy, Thomas, aged ten, ploughed and sowed the bit of cleared land, and the mother sp.it rails and made fences. She half-starved herself to make the store last out till next harvest, but then the corner whs turned and the family never knew actual want again. But young James was four years old before he had shoes on his feet. Thomas managed to earn some money at neighbouring farms, and shoes were obtained, and then James and his sisters were sent off to school. Thomas, with single-hearted devotion, sacrificed himself for the family, and toiled on. But the school was too far off, and the widow gave a piece of ground for a school-house, which the neighbours built. A schoolmaster was obtained, who boarded round at the houses of his scholars. James learned faster than any other pupil, but the schoolmaster could never get him to sit still, and was obliged to wink at his perpetual restlessness. Time went on till James was twelve years old, and his brother twenty-one. Thomas earned seventy -five dollars by a job of dealing land in Michigan. Then the boys set to work to make their mother a comfortable frame house from materials that had been long accumulating. A carpenter was hired, who praised James' handiness, and this set the boy thinking that he too could do something to help mother. For two years he did carpentering at intervals with his school-work, and built four or five barns in that district. Then he worked as a clerk and salesman in a store at fourteen dollars a month. Whilst hi;re his imagination becam > excited by some books he read. He longed to go to sea and make a career for himself. For awhile, after leaving the 6tore, he kept at wood-chopping, haying, harvesting, and so forth, but at length he told his mother of his dreams It was a terrible blow to her. All her hope 3 were set on her boy becoming a scholar, but she gave way to his entreaties, and with his bundle of clothes and a few dollars iv his pocket the lad (rudged off the seventeen miles to Cleveland. His attempts to get employed on a schooner weie unsuccessful. In July, 18-17, he c. gaged himself as driver to a cnnil-boat. For four months he experience ia r High, hard life. Fourteen times was young Garfield immersed ia the water. On the last occasion h's escape from drowning was sn marvellous that it made a deep impression on him. "There were a thousand chances against my life," he thought. "Against such od "s Providence alone could save it. Providence, therefore, thinks it worth saving, and if that's so, I won't throw it away on a canal-boat. I'll go home, get education, and be a man." After being nursed through a sharp attack of ague, the result of his canal-boat experiences, young Garfield. now sixteen years of age, set to work earnestly at his studio. His mother and brother gave him seventeen dollars, which was the last help he received from them, and with alternate work and study he spent three years at Chester. It was not long before he was able to drop carpentering and woxl-cutting, and procure the funds he required by teaching.