the speaker himself, would have
considered such a statement within the range of credibility. Alas, that
it should have been!--that the monstrous murder of the good Lincoln
should have been repeated in these latter days, and the nation have come
a second time a mourner!

Will it be believed that Garfield's arrival and his speech had been
quite accidental, though we must also count it as Providential, since it
stayed the wild excesses of an infuriated mob. He had only arrived from
Washington that morning, and after breakfast had strolled through the
crowded streets, in entire ignorance of the great gathering at the
Exchange building.

He turned down Broadway, and when he saw the great concourse of people,
he kept on, to learn what had brought them together. Butler was speaking
when he arrived, and a friend who recognized him beckoned him to come up
there, above the heads of the multitude.

When he heard the wild cries for "Vengeance!" and noticed the swaying,
impassioned movements of the crowd, he saw the danger that menaced the
public order, and in a moment of inspiration he rose, and with a gesture
challenged the attention of the crowd. What he said he could not have
told five minutes afterward. "I only know," he said afterward, "that I
drew the lightning from that crowd, and brought it back to reason."

CHAPTER XXIX.

GARFIELD AS A LAWYER.

In the crowded activities of Garfield's life, my readers may possibly
have forgotten that he was a lawyer, having, after a course of private
study during his presidency of Hiram College, been admitted to the bar,
in 1861, by the Supreme Court of Ohio. When the war broke out he was
about to withdraw from his position as teacher, and go into practice in
Cleveland; but, as a Roman writer has expressed it, "Inter arma silent
leges." So law gave way to arms, and the incipient lawyer became a
general.

When the soldier put off his armor it was to enter Congress, and instead
of practicing law, Garfield helped to frame laws.

But in 1865 there came an extraordinary occasion, which led to the Ohio
Congressman entering upon his long delayed profession. And here I quote
from the work of Major Bundy, already referred to: "About that time
that great lawyer, Judge Jeremiah S. Black, as the attorney of the Ohio
Democrats who had been opposing the war, came to his friend Garfield,
and said that there were some men imprisoned in Indiana for conspiracy
against the Government in tryi