ly means. A farmer's work in America
is not like a farmer's work in England. The man who occupies the soil
is there at once his own landlord and his own labourer; and he has to
contend with nature as nobody in England has had to contend with it for
the last five centuries at least. He finds the land covered with
trees, which he has first to fell and sell as timber; then he must dig
or burn out the stumps; clear the plot of boulders and large stones;
drain it, fence it, plough it, and harrow it; build barns for the
produce and sheds for the cows; in short, MAKE his farm, instead of
merely TAKING it. This is labour from which many strong men shrink in
dismay, especially those who have come out fresh from a civilized and
fully occupied land. For a woman and a boy, it is a task that seems
almost above their utmost powers. Nevertheless, Mrs. Garfield and her
son did not fail under it. With her own hands, the mother split up the
young trees info rude triangular rails to make the rough snake fences
of the country--mere zigzags of wood laid one bit above the other;
while the lad worked away bravely at sowing fall and spring wheat,
hoeing Indian corn, and building a little barn for the harvest before
the arrival of the long cold Ohio winter. To such a family did the
future President originally belong; and with them he must have shared
those strong qualities of perseverance and industry which more than
anything else at length secured his ultimate success in life.

For James Garfield's history differs greatly in one point from that of
most other famous working men, whose stories have been told in this
volume. There is no reason to believe that he was a man of exceptional
or commanding intellect. On the contrary, his mental powers appear to
have been of a very respectable but quite ordinary and commonplace
order. It was not by brilliant genius that James Garfield made his way
up in life; it was rather by hard work, unceasing energy, high
principle, and generous enthusiasm for the cause of others. Some of
the greatest geniuses among working men, such as Burns, Tannahill, and
Chatterton, though they achieved fame, and though they have enriched
the world with many touching and beautiful works, must be considered to
have missed success in life, so far as their own happiness was
concerned, by their unsteadiness, want of self-control, or lack of
fixed principle. Garfield, on the other hand, was not a genius; but by
his sterli