Part 3

Newspapers were numerous in the home of Mr. Blaine, and never escaped the vigilant eye of the young and growing journalist and statesman. The Washington _Reporter_ made a large impression upon him, as did also the old Pittsburgh _Gazette_, a semi-weekly paper, and the _Tri-weekly National Intelligencer_ (Gales and Seaton, editors) was of the strongest and most vigorous character; also, the _United States Gazette_ (semi-weekly), published at Philadelphia, and edited by Joseph R. Chandler, of that city, and later on Joseph C. Neal’s _Saturday Gazette_. Surely the incoming of these nine or ten papers into the home every week, counting the semi- and tri-weekly issues, would furnish mental pabulum of the political sort in sufficient quantity to satisfy the longing of any young mind. No wonder his growth was strong and hardy. We have heard of an American boy of ten or twelve, who followed the Tichborne Claim case at its original trial through the English courts, but he was a bright high-school boy, who had every advantage of the best graded schools, and improved them steadily, and yet it was greatly to his credit. Graded schools were unknown in 1840, yet James, who had finished reciting Plutarch’s Lives the year before to his Grandfather Gillespie, watched eagerly for the heavily loaded sheets as they came by post or steam-boat, and posted himself on their contents. Besides these numerous papers, two magazines were taken and steadily read by the boy. They were both published in Philadelphia,--_Graham’s Magazine_ and _Godey’s Lady’s Book_. The one was dinner, and the other dessert, to the ever hungry mind.

The magazines will be remembered as among the very best the country afforded at that time. But things that do not grow with the country’s growth are soon outgrown in the day of steam and lightning.

The boy who read those periodicals then has not been outgrown, but he has outgrown much that then caused him to grow. They constituted the chief part of polite literature, as it was called, of that form, and helped in the culturing process which has resulted in harvests so abundant.

Can we imagine the deep joy and satisfaction of that mere boy of ten years at the election of General Harrison, for whom he had cheered a hundred times? And when he came through on his way to Washington, to be inaugurated president, he stayed over night at Brownsville, just across the bridge over the river, and James was presented to him.

No camera obscura ever photographed a face so distinctly, and no curious eyes ever took in the details of the scene more perfectly.

In addition to the two lady teachers who bore a part in the early education of James Blaine, there are four men who held a conspicuous place as instructors in the neighboring country school he attended, and who are remembered with gratitude to-day. These are Albert G. Booth, Joshua V. Gibbons, Solomon Phillips, and Campbell Beall. Mr. Booth is still living, and has doubtless rejoiced many times that he did his foundation work so well.

Mr. Booth was one of those patient, careful, devoted workers who do good, honest work.

Joshua V. Gibbons bore a striking likeness to Abraham Lincoln. When an old man, he visited Mr. Blaine in Congress, at the time he was Speaker of the House. Mr. Blaine invited him to a seat beside him, in the Speaker’s desk. It was a worthy honor to a noble teacher, a moment of thrilling interest to the great national assembly, and attracted universal attention.

Mr. Gibbons was a man of heavy, strong mind, and forceful personality, and made himself deeply and strongly felt in the progress of young Blaine’s mental growth. He did solid, accurate, and enduring work.

Homely people, as a general thing, have quite a fund of native goodness, a sort of genial love and sympathy, to atone for physical defects. Such seemed to be the case with the man who so resembled Mr. Lincoln, and it drew all hearts to him. There was no rod or ruler in school so long as he taught, and no need of any. Such things are generally used in the school-room or family to supply deficiencies of wisdom, tact, and genuine ability. He simply won their love and respect, and it was their joy to give it. He taught them, also, things outside of the books, and told them plenty of good, wholesome stories. One day, in speaking about the heathen being away round on the other side of the world, he simply remarked,--“Of course you know the world is round,” but of course they did not.

The great eyes of James dilated, but he said nothing. He could not help thinking and taking a child’s view of it when school was out. It did not hurt much to fall down four or five times as he went home that night, with his eyes upturned toward the Heavens, and the great thought revolving in his brain. The first question his mother heard was,--

“Is this world round, anyhow, and how is it round?”

“Yes, my child,” and the old story of the ship was told, and he was examining the picture in the atlas when his father came in, and _he_ was sounded and agreed with the assured fact of science; and that night when he went up the hill to grandfather’s house to recite Plutarch, first of all he asked,--

“Grandpa, did you know this world was round?”

Grandpa took him up in his great arms, and told him all about it, and showing him through the window the great round haystack, on whose top and sides there was room for twenty boys like him without falling off, and how “the earth keeps turning around and around all the time, and a great power holds people on, just as the roots hold the trees, so no one can fall off,--and the fact is, it is so big, and large, and round, and wide, they cannot fall off,” Jimmy thought he saw it and felt that it must be so.

But the next week when he went to Pittsburgh with Uncle Will, on the steamer, he was looking all the way for proof that the world was round.

But what puzzled the boy fully as much, was the grave assertion, made without proof, that the sun does not move, when he knew that it did rise and set. Grandpa, and his parents, and Uncle Will, had to hold court every day until these questions were all settled, the testimony all in, and the dreams of the young learner reflected other scenes.

His youth had a great sorrow. No grandson was ever loved and petted and cared for and helped in a thousand ways as his Grandfather Gillespie had helped and loved and cared for him. Though a man of affairs, and carrying on business operations on a large scale and in distant parts, he loved his home and all about him, and took special pride in this boy. The heart of James was truly won. It was his special joy to be up at grandfather’s. It was not the big red apple-tree, nor the great clock on the stairs, nor the old rusty sabre and flint-lock musket, and the many relics of the Revolution that attracted him, but grandfather himself.

But grandfather did not get up, one morning, and the doctor was there, and nobody went to work, and there was general alarm. The delirium of fever was on him, but his strong constitution resisted its ravages of inward fire for days and weeks. Now he went there oftener, walked more softly, asked more eagerly. It all seemed so very strange. There was his great chair vacant, and the hand that had so often lain on his head seemed void of touch and power now. Everything seemed to stop. Books had nothing in them now; papers were unopened. The world grew darker and darker, until one black night, amid a terrific storm, word came that grandfather had just died, and father and mother would not be home for some time. The sun seemed to set to James, and he cried himself to sleep, while the other children bewailed their loss.

The morrow was bright and clear, but full of sadness, and as he looked upon the dear old man lying there, and felt his cold face and hand,--he had never seen death before,--he was filled with wonder. The loss, indeed, was great to him. But his memory was an inspiration, and knowing what grandpa would have him do, he returned to his study with renewed energy and to feel more than ever the worth and power of books the departed one had prized so highly.

Solomon Phillips was a Quaker and a farmer, but a man of strong, powerful intellect, honest as the day was long, painstaking and persevering. Mathematics were his special delight. It is a triumph of skill in teaching to love a hard, difficult science so as to get others to love it, also. In this he succeeded. He felt its worth and power. He would divide 0 by 1 (zero by one), and get infinity, and sit and gaze out into its clear, white depths; and reversing the process he would divide one by zero, and get the same result, and again gaze upon the white depths of a world most beautiful to thought, in its clear, unclouded, not nothingness, but somethingness, and that something infinity. He seemed almost to worship at the shrine of this kingly science, and would tell again and again how brilliant and beautiful, and with what delightful accuracy, the labyrinths of the most gnarled and vexed problems opened to him.

This was the man to give Master James his great lift in preparation for college.

He followed promptly wherever the Quaker master led the way. Week after week, and month after month, and term after term, the drill went on. There were no bounds or limits then, as in academies now, so these were passed as ships pass the equator, or railroad trains pass state or county lines. Hard study was the work of the hour, but hard study made work easy, and this was the secret, of all his progress,--constant study brought constant victory.

When his Grandfather Gillespie died, his father took up the drill in history, and Hume’s England was gone over carefully, beside Marshall’s Life of Washington and a volume of Macaulay’s Essays which he got hold of as a young boy.

His father had a fine, large library, in which he delved by day and night, and aroused his son not only by example to constant application, but also by persistent pressure. Here is the real key to that early career of youthful days so thoroughly utilized,--the father’s intelligent watchfulness, and careful method, and constant direction. Only gauge the wheel to the stream, and the grist to the wheel, and there will be no danger.

The father determined his son should be educated to the utmost, and planned and wrought accordingly. No time was lost, and no undue haste made; it was the persistency of constant pressure that won the day.

His boyhood was a happy, healthy period. He could swim across to Brownsville, discarding both ferry and bridge.

He went nutting with the boys, as is their wont when autumn days are on the woods, and Nature, glorified with a thousand tints of foliage, is, in the poet’s sombre language, “in the sere and yellow leaf.” Black walnuts, butternuts, shellbarks, hickory nuts, and chestnuts rewarded their search, and gladdened winter evenings with their cheer.

There was nothing unnatural about young Blaine. He was no prodigy; no marvel, except of industry and constant training. He was simply a fair exhibition of what a good average boy, well endowed with pluck and brains may become in the hands of good teachers, and under the guidance of intelligent love and the unyielding pressure of a strong paternal will. What his Eulogy says of Garfield is equally true of himself:--“He came of good stock on both sides;--none better, none braver, none truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manhood, and of imperishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle.”

Mr. Blaine could also speak of himself as “fifth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts,” and had fought under Prince Charles in the affair of 1715 and 1723.

So satisfactory had been his progress thus far in the school, that the plan of his education involved, in 1841, sending him to Lancaster, Ohio, where for one term he was in a school taught by a younger brother of Lord Lyons, so long our Minister from England, who according to English law inherited nothing from his father’s estates, the eldest brother receiving all; and so he made his home in the New World, and worthily engaged in training future presidents of the great Republic.

During his term in Lancaster his home was in the family of Hon. Thos. Ewing, his mother’s cousin. Mr. Ewing was a United States Senator when James was born, and entered the Cabinet of President Harrison the year before James’s appearance there as student, as Secretary of the Treasury, and in 1849 in Taylor’s Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, both of whom died soon after their inauguration. In 1849 Governor Ford appointed him to the Senate in the place of Hon. Thomas Corwin, who entered Fillmore’s Cabinet.

This first and only term of school away from home and out of that little country school-house in preparation for college, under the broadening influences of such a home and the inspiration of such a teacher, was a long stride forward toward the desired goal. It was a great journey in those days for a boy only eleven years old to make, but it added another large chapter to his already wide range of knowledge and experience.

The other James, only a year younger, was living with his mother in the woods of Orange, in the same state of Ohio, improving the modest privileges of school, and maturing slowly, the winter James G. Blaine spent at Lancaster in the spacious home of that distant relative who had enjoyed all the high honors of the government, next to the presidency.

These boys were probably not over one hundred miles apart that winter, and both at school,--investing more largely in themselves than in all besides, using themselves as capital, their own powers and endowments. Surely no course is wiser, as their careers amply prove. It is gathering what is outside that one may get out what is inside, that is the process of education; not getting what is outside regardless of what is within, that may be developed into treasures of transcendent worth, more valuable than the contents of forest and mine.

American history furnishes few examples of the practical value of cultivated brain more illustrious and potent than James A. Garfield and James G. Blaine, and each the opposite in temperament and opportunity, but both brought up on a farm, and both getting their first start up the hill of knowledge in a country school.

Where are the two boys who, forty or fifty years from now, will take the helm of state and guide the ponderous ship farther on her tireless voyage?

No ever-recurring problem for the nation’s wisdom and the nation’s choice, is greater than this one problem of presidents. It is the nation’s offer of greatness and renown to any boy who, through long years of patient and persistent endeavor, will seek full and honorable preparation for the prize she proffers.

The brief stay at Lancaster was soon over, and James once more harnessed into the old régime at home, with Campbell Beall for teacher, in the same old house that seven years before he entered, a boy of five years old.

In one year he is to pass his examination to enter Washington and Jefferson College, in the village of Washington, their shire-town of three thousand inhabitants, twenty-four miles away. Will he be ready? Much depends on Campbell Beall, much on his father, and much on himself.

The common English branches are well wrought over, languages and mathematics have come to be a delight, and in the old atmosphere, and the old ways, with the old inspiration on him, progress comes anew. Lines of reading from the library are kept up; the papers and magazines are not neglected; political matters are settled; bad news comes in from every quarter; Tyler is at the head of affairs; Ewing has sent in his scathing letter of resignation as Secretary of the Treasury, charging him with violating every promise the Whig party made to the people; but there is no campaign, no voting to be done, so the thing is settled.

Mr. Beall proves a good teacher. The Latin begun at Lancaster is renewed at home, and so the winter goes by. Time seems literally to be alive and drifts like the snow as it goes rushing by. As Benj. F. Taylor has it:--

“How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And the summers, like buds between; And the year, in its sheaf, so they come and they go On the river’s breast, with its ebb and its flow, As it glides thro’ the shadow and sheen.”

Father, mother, teacher, Uncle Will, all seem convinced that James can pass and enter college; so, though only thirteen years of age, his father takes him in the carriage, and they drive over to Washington.

It is a great experience for older heads, but for one so young, a veritable epoch in his history.

It does not take long to convince the president that he has drawn a prize, and he is entered with about forty other bright, smart boys, for the Freshman class in the autumn. After three months of vacation, the great work is to begin in real earnest, and the stuff those boys are made of is to be thoroughly tried and tested.

There was none of the hard, rough, and bitter experience in his boyhood days and early manhood to which so many of our nation’s great men were subjected. He had none of the long and desperate struggles 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.

III.

IN COLLEGE.

The summer of 1843 was bright with the anticipations of college life to the eager boy. Manhood seemed dawning upon him, in all its glory. Since his examinations, the great Dr. McConaughy had grasped his hand so kindly and drawn him to his side; then putting his arm around him had said, as he brushed the long, light hair from his forehead,--

“You are a brave boy; I am glad to see you and know you. We shall have a good place ready for you September third, and I shall be glad to see you in my home.”

The president of Washington and Jefferson College could appreciate to the full the fact before him, that this boy, without the aid of high school or academy, was more than ready for the studies and honors of college.

The three months of summer were not lost. A general review was had, and particular attention paid to toning him up physically. He would plunge into the river and swim to his heart’s content; dash away on horse-back for a good ride; go over to Brownsville, where they all did their trading, on errands, and regularly for the papers and magazines; go on excursions up and down the river, and, withal, help in the field, especially at harvest-time, and fill up regular hours with his best endeavors at study. So that he was not rusty and broken in habit, when September came; and it came very soon. His going to college was quite an event for the community. The neighbors took pride in it, for James was greatly beloved. His exploits with books were known to all. Teachers had reported his progress and rejoiced in it.

It took a long while to say all the good-byes, but early Monday morning he was off, and soon nicely settled in a good boarding-place, and when the great bell rang out the beginning of new school-year, James G. Blaine was in his place taking in the situation in all its magnitude and interest.

There were one hundred and seventy-five scholars present, all boys and young men. There was a young ladies’ school, or seminary, in another part of the town, but they were entirely separated, and boys and girls were not mingled together, as now in some of our colleges.

James devoted himself strictly to study, and retired promptly at ten o’clock each night. He found himself in a large class of bright, energetic students, full of pranks, jokes, and fun, but still boys of nerve, and pluck, and ample brain; boys who had been well fitted for the task before them, many of them in the preparatory department of the institution itself, so that they were familiar with the place, and had known each other for several years. They were not long in finding that the new boy, who came from down near the big bridge, knew about Greek and Latin grammars, and could read without difficulty when his turn came.

He did not have the town-boy sort of look that many of the others had, but his good manners, and kind, easy ways made them feel and acknowledge that he was a little gentleman, anyhow. His mother had never neglected her boy, and his father, being a professional man, knew the joy and worth of being a gentleman; and, if they had done but little, his grandfather had planted seeds of kindness in him enough to produce a bountiful harvest. He moulded and shaped his ways and manners to the clear, strong model that was never wanting in the old Scottish clans and seems to remain in the very blood and very atmosphere of life and character.

There was nothing brusque or acrid about him. He took on and wore the air and atmosphere of the enlightened, quiet, and cultured home-life in which he was brought up. He was modest and retiring, there for a purpose, and devoted to its accomplishment. It was not hard, distasteful work to him, but a loved and longed-for opportunity. He had no ills or aches to nurse, or trouble him. He felt greatly the absence from home. But he was not off in Ohio now, only four and twenty miles from old, familiar Indian Hill farm. But his books absorbed him; study roused and cheered him; competition electrified and nerved him. Nothing would sting him like missing a question, or any petty failure. But these were few and simple. He took first rank at once, and held it steadily to the end.

His life at college was a comparatively quiet one. He never appeared upon a public exhibition, although he entered the societies, and took part in debates, read essays, contributed to the college paper, and delivered orations.

He was rather retiring in his disposition, and sought rather to be a worshiper at the shrine of knowledge, than as is so often the case, be worshiped.

The quiet reticence and reserve referred to may strike some, owing to their knowledge of his dashing brilliancy of later years. But as a surprise, the modest, unobtrusive habit was happily conducive to study, and served as a guard against many of the intrusions of a student’s life. While kind and affable, he was not of the hail-fellow-well-met order. But he was not a recluse,--no monk with monkish ways. He was a student, through and through, and he loved study; it satisfied him and served his aspirations.

He was a boy no longer; he had come to himself, to self-consciousness; a consciousness of his powers, to a recognition of his own personal identity. Manhood was fast coming on him; he was out of childhood. It was a new world in thought to him, and life at college a new world in fact. He was respected and honored and trusted now, in a sense different from being loved and petted and cared for at home. There was not so much praise, but more power in it. He was on his own responsibility now, and must rely largely upon his own resources. Manliness was the needful quality. It was everywhere in demand. At study it was the prelude to victory; in the recitation-room it was the well-poised harbinger of success, and in association with others it always won. This was just the quality that those who loved him had sought to develop in him, and they had not failed. He would take hold of the hardest task with a marvelous energy of resolve. His will was a strong feature of his personality. It was an element of power that served him now. He had reached a long-sought height and was pushing on.