ng good qualities he nevertheless achieved what cannot but be
regarded as a true success, and left an honourable name behind him in
the history of his country.

However poor an American township may be, it is seldom too poor to
afford its children a moderate and humble education. While James
Garfield was still very young, the settlers in the neighbourhood
decided to import a schoolmaster, whom they "boarded about" between
them, after a fashion very common in rural western districts. The
school-house was only a log hut; the master was a lad of twenty; and
the textbooks were of the very meagrest sort. But at least James
Garfield was thus enabled to read and write, which after all is the
great first step on the road to all possible promotion. The raw,
uncouth Yankee lad who taught the Ohio boys, slept at Widow Garfield's,
with Thomas and James; and the sons of the neighbouring settlers worked
on the farm during the summer months, but took lessons when the long
ice and snow of winter along the lake shore put a stop almost entirely
for the time to their usual labours.

James continued at school till he was twelve years old, and then, his
brother Thomas (being by that time twenty-one) went away by agreement
still further west to Michigan, leaving young Jim to take his place
upon the little farm. The fences were all completed, by this time; the
barn was built, the ground was fairly brought under cultivation, and it
required comparatively little labour to keep the land cropped after the
rough fashion which amply satisfies American pioneers, with no rent to
pay, and only their bare living to make out of the soil. Thomas was
going to fell trees in Michigan, to clear land there for a farmer; and
he proposed to use his earnings (when he got them) for the purpose of
building a "frame house" (that is to say, a house built of planks)
instead of the existing log hut. It must be added, in fairness, that
hard as were the circumstances under which the young Garfields lived,
they were yet lucky in their situation in a new country, where wages
were high, and where the struggle for life is far less severe or
competitive than in old settled lands like France and England. Thomas,
in fact; would get boarded for nothing in Michigan, and so would be
able easily to save almost all his high wages for the purpose of
building the frame house.

So James had to take to the farm in summer, while in the winter he
began to work as a sort of amat