l
and manufacturing district in Pennsylvania, to be smelted and employed
in various local arts. Young Garfield stuck for a little while to the
canal business. He plodded along wearily upon the bank, driving his
still wearier horse before him, and carrying ore down to Pittsburg with
such grace as he best might; but it didn't somehow quite come up to his
fancy picture of the seaman's life. It was dull and monotonous, and he
didn't care for it much. In genuine American language, "he didn't find
it up to sample." The sea might be very well in its way; but a canal
was a very different matter indeed. So after a fair trial, James
finally gave the business up, and returned to his mother on the little
homestead, ill and tired with his long tramping.

While he was at home, the schoolmaster of the place, who saw that the
lad had abilities, was never tired of urging him to go to school, and
do himself justice by getting himself a first-rate education, or at
least as good a one as could be obtained in America. James was ready
enough to take this advice, if the means were forthcoming; but how was
he to do so? "Oh, that's easy enough," said young Bates, the master.
"You'll only have to work out of hours as a carpenter, take odd jobs in
your vacations, live plainly, and there you are." In England there are
few schools where such a plan would be practicable; but in
rough-and-ready America, where self-help is no disgrace, there are
many, and they are all well attended. In the neighbouring town of
Chester, a petty Baptist sect had started a young school which they
named Geauga Seminary (there are no plain schools in America--they are
all "academies" or "institutes"); and to this simple place young
Garfield went, to learn and work as best he might for his own
advancement. A very strange figure he must then have cut, indeed; for
a person who saw him at the time described him as wearing a pair of
trousers he had long outworn, rough cow-hide boots, a waistcoat much
too short for him, and a thread-bare coat, with sleeves that only
reached a little below the elbows. Of such stuff as that, with a stout
heart and an eager brain, the budding presidents of the United States
are sometimes made.

James soon found himself humble lodgings at an old woman's in Chester,
and he also found himself a stray place at a carpenter's shop in the
town, where he was able to do three hours' work out of school time
every day, besides giving up the whol