to these spirited rebukes saw that the young member
from Ohio would not allow himself to be snubbed or insulted with
impunity, and the few who were accustomed to descend to such discourtesy
took warning accordingly. They were satisfied that Garfield, to quote a
common phrase, would give them as good as they sent, and perhaps a
little better. The boy, who at sixteen, when employed on the tow-path,
thrashed the bully of thirty-five for insulting him, was not likely in
his manhood to submit to the insults of a Congressional bully. He was a
man to compel respect, and had that resolute and persistent character
which was likely ere long to make him a leader. So Disraeli, coughed
down in his first attempt to speak before the English House of Commons,
accepted the situation, but recorded the prediction that one day they
would hear him. He, too, mounted step by step till he reached the
highest position in the English Government outside of royalty. A man who
is destined to be great is only strengthened by opposition, and rises in
the end victorious over circumstances.

Garfield soon made it manifest that he had come to Washington to work.
He was not one to lie back and enjoy in idleness the personal
consequence which his position gave him. All his life he had been a
worker, and a hard worker, from the time when he cut one hundred cords
of wood, at twenty-five cents a cord, all through his experience as a
canal-boy, a carpenter, a farm-worker, a janitor, a school teacher, a
student, and a military commander, and now that he had taken his place
in the grand council of the nation, he was not going to begin a life of
self-indulgent idleness.

In consideration of his military record he was, at his entrance into
Congress, put upon the Military Committee; but a session or two later,
at his own request, he was assigned a place on the Committee of Ways and
Means. His reason for this request was, that he might have an
opportunity of studying the question of finance, which he had sufficient
foresight to perceive would one day be a great question, overshadowing
all others. He instantly set himself to a systematic and exhaustive
study of this subject, and attained so thorough a knowledge of it that
he was universally recognized as a high authority--perhaps the highest
in the department. He made speech after speech on the finance question,
and was a pronounced advocate of "Honest Money," setting his face like a
flint against those who advoca