e name had
received about fifty votes. When that name was read, it was greeted
with a mighty cheer, which grew louder and louder, until the whole of
the vast building resounded with the name of James A. Garfield.
Another ballot was taken, and Garfield was found to be the chosen of
his party.

He was nominated as the Republican candidate; and on November 2, 1880,
the "little sapling" of the Western Reserve became the President of the
United States, the uncrowned monarch of one of the greatest nations of
the world. Thus had he marched along. At fourteen he was working at
the carpenter's bench; at sixteen he was a canal boatman; two years
later he entered the Chester school; at twenty-one he was a common
school teacher.

Then in his twenty-third year he entered the university, graduating
three years afterwards. At twenty-seven he became principal of the
Hiram Institute. The next year he was a Member of the Ohio Senate. At
thirty-one he was at the head of a regiment; at thirty-two, a
major-general; at thirty-three, a Member of Congress; at forty-eight he
was made a Member of the National Senate; and at fifty he became
President of the United States.

We have said that the secret of Garfield's success was his integrity.
To this he owed the respect which advanced him to each position of
trust until it made him head of the Government. And it was to this
noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had
grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last
mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to
set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public
business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also
announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required
from every officer of the State."

This conduct bitterly annoyed some of his own party, who had expected
that Garfield would follow the example of other Presidents, and turn
out all the civic officers, to make room for his own friends. This
annoyance at length found expression in the wicked act of a wretched
creature, a disappointed office-seeker, named Guiteau.

The new President had been but a few months in office, when Guiteau
followed him into the railway station at Washington, and, as he entered
the waiting-room, shot him in the back. The President fell wounded,
but not unconscious. In great pain, he still remembered his loved
ones, and moaned,