lace where so little
consideration is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginners.
What a man gains in the House he gains by sheer force of his own
character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy, and
will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the
strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive and
no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is
impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed.

"With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in
the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his college
graduation. But he had not been in his seat sixty days before his
ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front
with the confidence of one who belonged there. The House was crowded
with strong men of both parties; nineteen of them have since been
transferred to the Senate, and many of them have served with distinction
in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, and on foreign
missions of great consequence; but among them all none grew so rapidly,
none so firmly, as Garfield. As is said by Trevelyan, of his
parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded 'because all the world in concert
could not have kept him in the back-ground, and because when once in the
front he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease
that were but the outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy on
which it was in his power to draw.' Indeed, the apparently reserved
force which Garfield possessed was one of his great characteristics. He
never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better.
He never expended so much strength but that he appeared to be holding
additional power at call. This is one of the happiest and rarest
distinctions of an effective debater, and often counts for as much, in
persuading an assembly, as the eloquent and elaborate argument.

"The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled by his service in the
House of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by honorable
performance, and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely
terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might
have done in a field where the great prizes are so few, cannot be
profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a soldier he did his duty
bravely; he did it intelligently; he won an enviable fame, and he
retired from the service w