"Where?"

"At the Geauga Seminary. I can refer you to the teachers there. I have
studied under them for three years, and they know all about me."

"What is your name?"

"James A. Garfield."

"There is something in that young man," said one of the trustees to Mr.
Williams. "He seems thoroughly in earnest, and I believe will be a hard
worker."

"I agree with you," was the reply.

James was informed that his petition was granted, and he at once made
arrangements for his residence at Hiram.

CHAPTER XIV.

AT HIRAM INSTITUTE.

Hiram, the seat of the Eclectic Institute, was not a place of any
pretension. It was scarcely a village, but rather a hamlet. Yet the
advantages which the infant institution offered drew together a
considerable number of pupils of both sexes, sons and daughters of the
Western Reserve farmers, inspired with a genuine love of learning, and
too sensible to waste their time on mere amusement.

This is the account given of it by President B.A. Hinsdale, who for
fifteen years has ably presided over its affairs: "The institute
building, a plain but substantially built brick structure, was put on
the top of a windy hill, in the middle of a cornfield. One of the cannon
that General Scott's soldiers dragged to the City of Mexico in 1847,
planted on the roof of the new structure, would not have commanded a
score of farm houses.

"Here the school opened at the time Garfield was closing his studies at
Chester. It had been in operation two terms when he offered himself for
enrollment. Hiram furnished a location, the Board of Trustees a building
and the first teacher, the surrounding country students, but the
spiritual Hiram made itself. Everything was new. Society, traditions,
the genius of the school, had to be evolved from the forces of the
teachers and pupils, limited by the general and local environment. Let
no one be surprised when I say that such a school as this was the best
of all places for young Garfield. There was freedom, opportunity, a
large society of rapidly and eagerly opening young minds, instructors
who were learned enough to instruct him, and abundant scope for ability
and force of character, of which he had a superabundance.

"Few of the students who came to Hiram in that day had more than a
district-school education, though some had attended the high schools and
academies scattered over the country; so that Garfield, though he had
made but slight progress in the classi