Part 2

The great-grandfather of Ephraim Lyon Blaine, father of James G., was born in 1741, and died at Carlisle, Penn., in March, 1804. He was a colonel in the Revolutionary war from its commencement, and the last four years of the war was the Commissary General. He was with Washington amid the most trying scenes, and enjoyed his entire confidence. During the dark winter at Valley Forge, he was by the side of the Commander-in-Chief, and it is a matter of history that the army was saved from starvation by his vigilant and tireless activity. It is not difficult to see how stupendous was the task of subsisting broken and shattered forces in the dead of an awful winter, upon an exhausted country. It required skill and courage, tact and force of personal power, not surpassed even in the daring march of Napoleon across the Alps. But he did it, brave, determined spirit that he was. Others might falter, but not he; others might break down from sheer exhaustion or dismay, but not General Blaine, so long as the fires of the unbroken spirit of the old Covenanters heated the furnace of his heart, and their high resolve for liberty was enthroned in his affections.

From such parent stock what shall the bloom and blossom be? What the fruitage and harvesting of other years from the seed-sowing of such splendid living? Not what the height of stature, but what the stature of soul,--not what the breadth of back, nor bigness of brawn, but what the breadth of mind and bigness of brain?

Let the history of our day and generation make reply.

Eight years before the old patriot General died, at Carlisle, his grandson, Ephraim Lyon Blaine, the father of James, was born in the same quaint old Scottish town. At Dickinson College he received his education, and settled as a lawyer in Washington County, Penn., where for years he lived an honored and useful life as Prothonotary of the Courts; and here, amid the lull in the storm of battle-years, the boy, James G. Blaine, was born.

His cradle-songs were the old songs of the New Republic. It is pleasant to think of such a personage coming to consciousness, clear and strong, among such hallowed scenes of a land redeemed, a nation born, a people free. All about our youthful hero were the scarred faces and shattered forms of those who had come back from the fields of strife.

The stories of Monmouth and Brandywine, of Concord and Lexington, of New Orleans and Yorktown, were lived over and dreamed about. Living epistles, walking histories, were all about him. Instead of reading about them, they read to him, poured out the dearly-bought treasures of a life, painted scenes that were forever impressed upon their minds; with all the shades of life and death, unrolled the panorama of the great campaigns, through those long, dread battle-years. What education this, in home and street, in shop and store, on farm and everywhere, for patriot youth! It gave a love and zest for historic reading, which must be traced when we enter more largely upon his literary and educational career.

At five years of age the systematic work of an education began by sending James to a common country school near by. The old United States spelling-book was the chief textbook. Webster’s spelling-book was not then in vogue. Nothing remarkable transpired, except to note the proficiency and steady progress he made in mastering the language he has learned so well to use.

The intensity of his life was that within, rather than the outer life. He was observing, drinking in with eyes and ears. Robinson Crusoe was his first book, as it has been with many another boy, and from this beginning he became a most omnivorous reader.

His first two teachers were ladies, and are still living. The first, a Quakeress, Miss Mary Ann Graves, now Mrs. Johnson, living near Canton, Ohio, eighty-four years of age; the other was Mrs. Matilda Dorsey, still living at Brownsville, just across the Monongahela River from Washington County, where Mr. Blaine was born. While speaking in Ohio, five years ago, during Governor Foster’s campaign, his old teacher, Mrs. Johnson, came forward at the close of his speech to congratulate her old scholar. How little these two women dreamed of the splendid future of the young mind they helped start up the hill of knowledge; how little they thought of the tremendous power with which he would one day use the words, great and small, he spelled out of that old book; the great occasions upon which he would marshal them, as a general marshals his men for effective warfare; of the great speeches, orations, debates, papers, pamphlets, and books into which he would put a power of thought that would move nations.

It was merely a country school-house, and the old frame-building has been torn down, and a new and more modern brick house substituted. It was not simply to spell words, but also to read and write, and, indeed, gain the rudiments of a thorough English education.

As a learner, he exhibited the same quick, energetic traits of mind he has since shown in the use of the knowledge gained.

It was upon the hardest kind of high, rough seats his first lessons were learned, with none of the splendid appliances of the graded school of to-day. Then was the time of the rod and fool’s cap, which many remember so distinctly. Boys that fought were compelled to “cut jackets,” as it was called. The stoutest boy in school was sent with an old-fashioned jack-knife to cut three long switches, stiff, and strong, and lithe. The offending boys were called upon the floor before the whole school, and each one given a rod, while the teacher reserved the third. They were commanded to go at it, and at it they went, to the uproarious delight of the whole school. Nothing could be more ludicrous, as stroke after stroke thicker and faster fell, on shoulders, back, and legs, while the blood flew through their veins hot and tingling. The contest ended only when the switches gave out. When one was broken and cast away, the teacher stepped up and laid his switch on the back of the boy whose switch was whole, while the other fellow had to stand and take it from the boy whose switch was yet sound. So they kept at it, stroke after stroke.

The demoralizing effect for the moment had a great moralizing power afterward. No boy ever wanted to take the place of one of these boys.

Master James was seldom punished at school, except to have his knuckles rapped with the ruler, or ears boxed for some slight offence; but he never failed to take full notes of the fracas, when other boys received their just deserts. His observations have always been very minute, and his remembrances distinct. Among his earliest recollections is one in 1834, when he was but four years of age, the building of a bridge across the Monongahela River to Brownsville, by the company that constructed the National Road. His Uncle Will took him by the hand and led him out upon the big timbers, between which he could look down and see the waters below. The building of this bridge was a great event to the people, and one of special interest in the Gillespie family, as his grandfather owned the ferry, which of course the bridge superseded, and which had been a source of revenue to the extent of five thousand dollars a year to him. But in the march of progress ferries give way to bridges, as boyhood does to manhood, and by a sort of mute prophecy that bridge made and proclaimed the way to Washington more easy. It was to him the bridge over that dark river of oblivion from the unknown of childhood to the consciousness of youth and manhood. This same uncle, William L. Gillespie, who held him by the hand while on the bridge, was often with his favorite nephew, and exerted a strong influence for good upon him. He was a fine scholar, a splendid gentleman, and a man of infinite jest. The impressions received from one so accomplished, and yet so genial, loving, and tender, during these walks and talks, of almost constant and daily intercourse, are seen and felt to-day in the character of the nephew of whom we write.

The first outbreak in the nature of young James, and which shows latent barbarism so common to human nature, was a little escapade which happened when about five years old. A Welshman, by the name of Stephen Westley, was digging a well in the neighborhood; in some way he had injured the boy and greatly enraged him. The man at the top of the well had gone away, and Master James, who never failed to see an opportunity, or to estimate it at its proper value and improve it promptly, stepped upon the scene.

He found his man just where he wanted him, and without reflection as to consequences, began immediately to throw clods and stones upon him, which of course was no source of amusement to the man below. He screamed lustily, and on being rescued went to the house and complained of the young offender, saying,--

“He has too much _spurt_” (spirit).

It cost James a good thrashing, but the Welshman is not the only one who has had just cause to feel that “_he had too much spirit_.” Indeed it is the same great, determined spirit, trained, tempered, and toned by the stern conflict of life, which is the law of fullest development, and brought under complete control, that has given Mr. Blaine his national prominence, and filled the American mind with the proud dream of his leadership.

His grandfather Gillespie was the great man of that region. His Indian Hill farm, with its several large houses and barns, was a prominent feature of the country. He was a man of large wealth for his time; built mills and engaged in various enterprises, damming the river for milling purposes, which was a herculean task. In 1811, in company with Capt. Henry Shreve, later of Shreveport, he sent the first steamer from Pittsburgh. It was not until the year following that Fulton and Livingston began building steamers in that city.

This grandfather, Neal Gillespie, was five years old when the war of the Revolution began, and as a boy received the full impression of those scenes from the very midst of the fray in his Pennsylvania home. It doubtless helped to produce and awaken in him that great energy of character, and force of personality which enabled him to amass a fortune in that western wild, and in every way help forward the country’s development.

It was the good fortune of James to spend the first nine years of his life in the closest relations of grandson to grandsire, with this remarkable man; and doubtless much of that magnetism and rich personality for which Mr. Blaine is so justly noted, may be traced to this strong-natured and powerful ancestor upon the side of his mother, as well as to Gen. Ephraim Blaine, on the side of his father. He inherits the combined traits of character which gave them prominence and success in life.

The little country school and its slow, monotonous processes, were not rapid enough for the swift, eager mind of the boy. He had learned to read, and a new world opened to him. He caught its charm and inspiration. He had read Scott’s Life of Napoleon before he was eight years old,--a little fellow of seven, on a farm in an almost wilderness, devouring with his eager mind such a work! Half of our public men have never even heard of it yet. But what is perfectly amazing, before he was nine years old he had gone over all of Plutarch’s Lives, reciting the histories to his grandfather Gillespie, who died when he was nine years of age.

He acquired all that Isocrates and Alcibiades tell of, before he was ten years old, and it is a conviction with Mr. Blaine that the common ideas of the average boy’s ability need to be greatly enlarged. Certain it was, that he inherited a hardy mental and physical constitution. Life on that great farm kept him engaged and associated constantly with men who both enjoyed and appreciated learning, and who loved him and saw in him at least a remarkably bright boy.

Especially did his father, who was a college-graduate and member of the bar, see that he was steadily and persistently drilled, and to his father Mr. Blaine freely gives the credit so largely and justly due. His reading was not the careless, hap-hazard doing of a big-brained boy, who read from curiosity simply to while away time, but there was method in it,--a quieting hand was on him,--it was all done under intelligent, wise, and loving direction.

There was none of the hard, rough, and bitter experiences in his boyhood days or early manhood, to which so many of our nation’s great men were subjected. He had none of the long and desperate struggle with poverty and adversity which hung on Mr. Garfield’s early years. He knew nothing by experience of the privations and hardships through which Mr. Lincoln came to the high honors of the nation and the world; but sprang from the second generation after the Revolutionary War, and from a long line of ancestors who had been large land-owners and gentlemen in the sense of wealth and education, as well as in that finely cultivated sense, of which Mr. Blaine is himself so excellent an exponent.

James worked on the farm, carried water to the men, and carried the sheaves of grain together for the shockers, and did just as any school-boy on a farm would do;--hunt the eggs, frolic with the calves, feed the pigs, drive up the cows, run on errands, pet the lambs, bring in wood, and split the kindlings. He loved the sports in which boys still delight; went fishing, played ball, rowed his boat on the river, and would laugh, and jump, and tumble, and run equal to any boy. All the boys about him were sons or grandsons of old Revolutionary soldiers. They had a lesson which this day does not enjoy, to talk over and keep full of the old theme. The nation was then young, and new, and fresh. The Fourth of July was celebrated as it is not now; when old soldiers passed away, their deeds and worth were all talked over. The result was an intense Americanism, for which he has since become noted, and which has made him an American through and through, of the most pronounced loyalty and patriotic type, as to deem a stain upon his country’s honor an individual disgrace.

Empty sleeves and nothing to fill them, limbs gone and no substitute for them, were as common then comparatively as they are now, only now there is an artificial substitute.

James enjoyed the benefits and blessings of a large family home. It was the practice of his father to read aloud to his family, and thus the evening-hours were utilized in the early education of his children. Home training, so often neglected now, was in vogue then, and the legal, scholarly mind of Mr. Blaine could well choose in his fatherly love and pride, just what was best suited to the young minds about him, while he was amply competent to give intelligent and suitable answers to the numerous questions called forth by the narration in hand. That great National Road to the cities of the Union, and its larger towns, was a highway of intelligence. Not only did it bring the mail and all the news, but many a book, magazine, or other periodical they were pleased to order.

Beside, the direct communication by steamer with Pittsburgh and points above, which had been the case eighteen years before the birth of James, supplied abundant means for travel and correspondence with other quarters. Living where the steamers passed the highway, they were more highly favored with facilities of commerce and the news than perhaps any other portion of the land. They could get all there was going. There was no telegraph, and none of the swifter means of travel so common now; canal-boats were a luxury then. But all was life and energy. The enthusiasm of manhood was on the nation. Then, indeed, it was in manhood’s glory. It had grown to be its own ruler and governor; was truly of age, and did its own voting. British interference had learned its lesson of modest withdrawal, and for the same period of eighteen years no unnaturalized Englishman had been found on American soil with a uniform on and a gun in his hand.

There was a fine piano in the home of Mr. Blaine, and the good wife and mother was an excellent player, and frequently delighted the household with music. Songs abounded; a harpsichord was in the home, and it added its quaint music to the melody of the circle.

But James could not leave books alone, especially history. The history of the country was read by him over and over again. The books he had read, and that had been carefully read to him by the time he was ten years of age, would surpass in number, size, and literary value, the libraries of many a professional man, outside his purely professional works, and not only had the principal ones been read, but studied and recited. Seldom is any boy so highly favored with the interested personal efforts of such a trio of educators as were the father, uncle, and grandfather of Mr. Blaine.

It is frequently said by college-graduates, that they learn more outside of the recitation-room, from association with teachers and students from libraries and in the societies, than in the room for instruction. It was in associating with these relatives, cultured and gentlemanly, able and instructive, that he was encouraged and inspired to his task of learning. James mastered the spelling-book; in fact, he was the best speller in the school, and was called out far and near to spelling-matches, and every time “that boy of Mr. Blaine’s” would stand alone and at the head, when all the neighborhood of schools was “spelled down.”

One night the word was “Enfeoff.” It came toward the last, and was one of the test words. The sides were badly thinned as “independency, chamois, circumnavigation,” and a host of other difficult words had been given out. But the hour was growing late; some of the young fellows began to think of going home with the girls, of a big sleigh-ride down the mountain and through the valleys, and one big, merry load belonged over the river at Brownsville, and they began to be a little restless. But still there was good interest as this favorite triumphed, and that one went down. Finally the word was given, all missed it and sat down but James. Every eye was on him as the president of the evening said “Next,” and our little master of the situation spelt “En-feoff.”

No effort was made to restrain the cheers. The triumph was complete.

II.

PREPARATION.

At the death of his grandfather Gillespie, who was worth about one hundred thousand dollars,--a large sum for that early time,--Mrs. Blaine inherited, among other things, one-third of the great Indian Hill Farm, comprising about five hundred acres, with great houses, orchards, and barns,--a small village of itself.

This, with his father’s office in the courts, and other property, placed the family in good circumstances, and it was decided to give James a thorough education. He was now nine years old, with a mind as fully trained and richly stored as could be found for one of his years. He was a ready talker, and loved discussion, and so frequently showed what there was in him by the lively debates and conversations into which he was drawn.

Thus his ability to express himself tersely and to the point, was early developed. He came to be, almost unconsciously, growing up as he did among them, the admiration and delight of the large circle of friends and loved ones, whose interest centered on and about the farm, as well as among neighbors and acquaintances.

Bullion’s Latin Grammar was called into requisition, and mastered so well that he can conjugate Latin verbs as readily now as can his sons who are recent graduates, the one of Yale, and the other of Harvard.

The thoroughness with which he did his work is a delightful feature of his career. One is not compelled to feel that here is sham, and there is shoddy; that this is sheer pretense, and that is bold assumption, or a threadbare piece of flimsy patch-work.

One word expresses the history of the man, and that one word is _mastery_. It fits the man. Mastery of self; mastery of books; mastery of men; mastery of subjects and of the situation; mastery of principles and details. He goes to the top, every time and everywhere, sooner or later. And it is largely because he has been to the bottom first, and mastered the rudiments, one and all, and then risen to the heights, not by a single bound, but “climbing the ladder, round by round.”

The amazing power of dispatch in the man, as well as thoroughness, are only the larger development of his youthful habit and character.

It was not so much an infinite curiosity as an infinite love of knowledge that made his young mind drink so deeply. His was a thirsty soul, and only by drinking deeply and long could the demand be met.

When ten years old, the great campaign of General Harrison came on. He was ready for it, and soon filled up with the subject. His impulsiveness was powerful and intelligent, vastly beyond his years.

Few men were fresher or fuller of the history of the colonies and states than this boy. He was, in fact, a little library on foot, filled with incidents, names, and dates, familiar with the exploits of a thousand men and a score of battles, posted as to the great enterprises and measures of the day, by reason of his distinguished relations and his abundant facilities and sources of information. Perhaps, too, no campaign was ever more intense and popular, or entered more into the heart and home-life of young and old, than that of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” “Log Cabin and Free Cider.” The great gatherings, barbecues, and speeches, and multiplied discussions and talk everywhere in house and street, in office and shop, would fire any heart that could ignite, or rouse anyone not lost in lethargy. James was not troubled that way, but was always on hand; he would sit in the chimney-corner, or out on the great porch, while the old-line Whigs gathered to read, and hear, and digest aloud the news.

The political world had dawned upon him. He was in it for sure, and in earnest. His historical mind was gathering history ripe from the boughs. It was luscious to his taste. He was somewhere in every procession that wended its way with music and banners and mottoes innumerable to the place of speaking, and absorbed the whole thing.

Few could have voted more intelligently than he when election day came, for few had taken a livelier interest in the whole campaign, or taken the matter in more completely.

In three years he was admitted to college, so this was no spurt of mental power, but a steady growth, and but marked an era of intellectual unfolding.

It was a genuine and profitable source of most practical education, for all through the great and exciting campaign he did nothing else but attend the monster demonstrations. Dr. William Elder and Joseph Lawrence, the father of Hon. George B. Lawrence, now in Congress, were particularly powerful in impressions upon him.

Among the prominent speakers going through, who stopped to address meetings, was Wm. C. Rivers, of Virginia, who is particularly remembered by Mr. Blaine.

Hon. Thomas M. T. McKenna, father of the present Judge McKenna, was a distinguished personage in that portion of the state, and took an active and influential part in the contest,--a contest full of vim, as it was the first Whig victory on a national scale, but as full of good nature. Jackson’s severe methods and measures, throttling the Nullifiers, sweeping out of existence the great United States Bank at Philadelphia, with its $150,000,000 of capital, and sundry other measures, had filled the people with consternation, and a great change was imperatively demanded.