From Canal Boy to President

born. The relationship between the two boys was much closer than is common between cousins; for while their mothers were sisters, their fathers were half-brothers. Henry was

eld with a correspondent of the Boston Her

for their mother and sisters with their own hands, after the log hut, a little farther out in the field nearer the wood, had become unfit for habitation. Thomas G

family. In the little maple grove to the left, children played about the school-house where the dead President first gathered the rudiments upon which h

history as the one he helped to clear of the forest timber while he was yet but a child. It is the home of Henry B. Boy

this near relative of Garfield, smaller in stature than he

which his cousin had first helped to break. "His father died yonder, within a stone's throw of us, when the son was but a year and a half old. He knew

een. He could do both before he was nine, and before he was twelve, so familiar was he with the Indian history of the country, that he had named every tree in the orchard, which his father planted as he was born, with the name of some Indian chie

was a boy he would rather read than work. But he became a great student. He had to work after he was twelve years of age. In those days we were all poor, and it took hard knoc

conversation of a teacher in one of the schools of Cleveland, when it was yet a village, who had called. The talk of the educated man pleased the boy, and, while intent upon his story, a

efer to it without indignation, and almost immediately he left Mr. Morse's employ and went on the canal

ervice there. He had the chills all that fall and winter, yet he would shake and get his lessons at home; go over to the school and

ate about the same time The next year we went to the seminary at Chester, only twelve miles distant. Here our books were furnished us, and we cooked our own victuals. We lived upon a dollar a week each. Our diet was stro

ighboring town. We both went back to Chester to college, and would probably have finished our education there, but it was a Baptist school, and they were constantly making flings at the children of the Disciples, an

somewhat anticipate the course of our stor

could lisp until he became President. Here is a picture we had taken together," showing an old daguerreotype. "It does not resemble either of us much now. And yet they do say that we bore in our childhood, and still bear, a striking resemblance. I am still a farmer, while he grew great and powerful. He never permitted a suggestion, however, to be made in, my presence as to the difference in our p

ver gave up till he reached the same standard, and even went beyond it. It got to be known that no scholar could be ahead of him. Our association as men has been al

d power? Is there any other land where such a lad could make such rapid strides toward the goal which crowns the highest ambition? It is the career of such men that most commends our Government and institutions, proving as it does that by the humblest and poorest the highest dignities may be attained. James was content to live on mush and molasses, pork and potatoes, since they came within his narrow means, and gave him sufficient strength to pursue