age and confer with his
partisans. No, Garfield answered; if they wished to elect him they
must elect him in his absence; he would avoid all appearance, even, of
angling for office. The result was that all the other candidates
withdrew, and Garfield was elected by acclamation.

After the election he went down to Ohio and delivered a speech to his
constituents, a part of which strikingly illustrates the courage and
independence of the backwoods schoolmaster. "During the twenty years
that I have been in public life," he said, "almost eighteen of it in
the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing.
Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to
follow my conviction, at whatever personal cost to myself. I have
represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I
greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical
to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and
his name was Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep
with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not
have his approbation I should have bad companionship."

Only one higher honour could now fall to the lot of a citizen of the
United States. The presidency was the single post to which Garfield's
ambition could still aspire. That honour came upon him, like all the
others, without his seeking; and it came, too, quite unexpectedly.
Five months later, in the summer of 1880, the National Republican
Convention met to select a candidate for their party at the forthcoming
presidential election. Every four years, before the election, each
party thus meets to decide upon the man to whom its votes will be given
at the final choice. After one or two ineffectual attempts to secure
unanimity in favour of other and more prominent politicians, the
Convention with one accord chose James Garfield for its candidate--a
nomination which was quite as great a surprise to Garfield himself as
to all the rest of the world. He was elected President of the United
States in November, 1880.

It was a marvellous rise for the poor canal boy, the struggling
student, the obscure schoolmaster, thus to find himself placed at the
head of one among the greatest nations of the earth. He was still less
than fifty, and he might reasonably have looked forward to many years
of a happy, useful, and honourable life. Nevertheless, it is
impossible to feel that G