formerly a
schoolmaster, then captain of a canal boat, with whom he at once
engaged to drive his horses.

After a few months on the towpath, young Garfield contracted another
kind of fever quite unlike that from which he had been suffering
previously, and went home to be nursed out of it by his ever faithful
mother.

During his convalescence he thought a great deal over his cousin's
words,--"Jim, you've got too good a head on you to be a wood chopper or
a canal driver." "He who wills to do anything will do it," he had
learned from his mother's lips when a mere baby, and then and there he
said in his heart, "I will be a scholar; I will go to college." And so,
out of his sea fever and towpath experience was born the resolution
that made the turning point in his career.

Action followed hot upon resolve. He lost no time in applying himself
to the work of securing an education. Alternately chopping wood and
carpentering, farming and teaching school, ringing bells and sweeping
floors, he worked his way through seminary and college. His strong will
and resolute purpose to make the most of himself not only enabled him
to obtain an education, but raised him from the towpath to the
presidential chair.

GLADSTONE FOUND TIME TO BE KIND

A kindly act is a kernel sown,
That will grow to a goodly tree,
Shedding its fruit when time has flown
Down the gulf of Eternity.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

In the restless desire for acquisition,--acquisition of money, of
power, or of fame,--there is danger of selfishness, self-absorption,
closing the doors of our hearts against the demands of brotherly love,
courtesy, and kindness.

"I cannot afford to help," say the poor in pocket; "all I have is too
little for my own needs." "I should like to help others," says the
ambitious student, whose every spare moment is crowded with some extra
task, "but I have no money, and cannot afford to take the time from my
studies to give sympathy or kind words to the suffering and the poor."
Says the busy man of affairs: "I am willing to give money, but my time
is too valuable to be spent in talking to sick people or shiftless,
lazy ones. That sort of work is not in my line. I leave it to women and
the charitable organizations."

The business man forgets, as do many of us, the truth expressed by
Ruskin, that "a little thought and a little kindness are often worth
more than a great deal of money." A