religious doubts. He never wrote anything finer. It was beautiful,
grand, glorious, melancholy.

Thomas Carlyle started with the idea that the intellect was all, the
body nothing but an adjunct, an appendage. He would spur the intellect
to costly energies, and send the body supperless to bed. After years of
doubts and fears I learned that towards the end he returned to the
simplicities of the Gospel.

While this great thinker of the whole of life was sinking into his last
earthly sleep, the men in the parliament of his nation were squabbling
about future ambitions. Thirty-five Irish members were forcibly ejected.
Neither Beaconsfield nor Gladstone could solve the Irish question. Nor
do I believe it will ever be solved to the satisfaction of Ireland. But
a greater calamity than those came upon us; in the summer of this year
President Garfield was assassinated in Washington.

THE SEVENTH MILESTONE

1881-1884

On July 2, 1881, an attempt was made to assassinate President Garfield,
at the Pennsylvania Station, Washington, where he was about to board a
train. I heard the news first on the railroad train at Williamstown,
Mass., where the President was expected in three or four days.

"Absurd, impossible," I said. Why should anyone want to kill him? He had
nothing but that which he had earned with his own brain and hand. He had
fought his own way up from country home to college hall, and from
college hall to the House of Representatives, and from House of
Representatives to the Senate Chamber, and from the Senate Chamber to
the Presidential chair. Why should anyone want to kill him? He was not a
despot who had been treading on the rights of the people. There was
nothing of the Nero or the Robespierre in him. He had wronged no man. He
was free and happy himself, and wanted all the world free and happy. Why
should anyone want to kill him? He had a family to shepherd and educate,
a noble wife and a group of little children leaning on his arm and
holding his hand, and who needed him for many years to come.

Only a few days before, I had paid him a visit. He was a bitter
antagonist of Mormonism, and I was in deep sympathy with his Christian
endeavours in this respect. I never saw a more anxious or perturbed
countenance than James A. Garfield's, the last time I met him. It seemed
a great relief to him to turn to talk to my child, who was with me. He
had suffered enough abuse in his political campaign to suffice for