ss, hardly any one getting it right.
Then it was, 'How many boot-scrapers are there at the door?' 'How many
windows in the building?' 'How many trees in the field?' He was the
keenest observer I ever saw. I think he noticed and numbered every
button on our coats. A friend of mine was walking with him through
Cleveland one day, when Garfield stopped and darted down a cellar-way,
asking his companion to follow, and briefly pausing to explain himself.
The sign, 'Saws and Files,' was over the door, and in the depths was
heard a regular clicking sound. 'I think this fellow is cutting files,'
said he, 'and I have never seen a file cut.

"Down they went, and, sure enough, there was a man recutting an old
file; and they stayed ten minutes, and found out all about the process.
Garfield would never go by anything without understanding it.

"Mr. Garfield was very fond of lecturing in the school. He spoke two or
three times a week, on all manner of topics, generally scientific,
though sometimes literary or historical. He spoke with great freedom,
never writing out what he had to say, and I now think that his lectures
were a rapid compilation of his current reading, and that he threw it
into this form partly for the purpose of impressing it upon his own
mind.

"His facility of speech was learned when he was a pupil at Hiram. The
societies had a rule that every student should take his stand on the
platform and speak for five minutes on any topic suggested at the moment
by the audience. It was a very trying ordeal. Garfield broke down badly
the first two times he tried to speak, but persisted, and was at last,
when he went to Williams, one of the best of the five-minute speakers.
When he returned as principal, his readiness was striking and
remarkable."

Henry James says: "Garfield taught me more than any other man, living
or dead, and, proud as I am of his record as a soldier and a statesman,
I can hardly forgive him for abandoning the academy and the forum."

So President Hinsdale, one of Garfield's pupils, and his successor as
president, testifies: "My real acquaintance with Garfield did not begin
till the fall of 1856, when he returned from Williams College. He then
found me out, drew near to me, and entered into all my troubles and
difficulties pertaining to questions of the future. In a greater or less
degree this was true of his relations to his pupils generally. There are
hundreds of these men and women scattered over the