This speech gives the key-note of Garfield’s political action.  More than once he endangered his re-election and hazarded his political future by running counter to what he knew to be the wishes of his constituents and his party; but he would never allow himself to be a slave to party, or wear the yoke of political expediency.  He sought, first of all, to win the approval of his own conscience and his own sense of right, and then he was willing to “take the consequences,” even if they were serious enough to cut short the brilliant career which he so much enjoyed.

I conceive that in this respect he was a model whom I may safely hold up for the imitation of my readers, young or old.  Such men do credit to the country, and if Garfield’s rule of life could be universally adopted, the country would never be in peril.  A conscientious man may make mistakes of judgment but he can never go far astray.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE TRIBUTES OF FRIENDS.

Before going farther, in order that my young readers may be better qualified to understand what manner of man Garfield was, I will quote the remarks made by two of his friends, one a prominent member of the party opposed to him in politics.  In the Milwaukee Sentinel of Sept. 22d, I find this tribute by Congressman Williams, of that State: 

“Happening to sit within one seat of him for four years in the House, I, with others, perhaps had a better opportunity to see him in all of his moods than those more removed.  In action he was a giant; off duty he was a great, noble boy.  He never knew what austerity of manner or ceremonious dignity meant.  After some of his greatest efforts in the House, such as will live in history, he would turn to me, or any one else, and say:  ‘Well, old boy, how was that?’ Every man was his confidant and friend, so far as the interchange of every-day good feeling was concerned.

“He once told me how he prepared his speeches; that first he filled himself with the subject, massing all the facts and principles involved, so far as he could; then he took pen and paper and wrote down the salient points in what he regarded their logical order.  Then he scanned them critically, and fixed them in his memory.  ‘And then,’ said he, ’I leave the paper in my room and trust to the emergency.’  He told me that when he spoke at the serenade in New York a year ago, he was so pressed by callers that the only opportunity he had for preparation was, to lock the door and walk three times around the table, when he was called out to the balcony to begin.  All the world knows what that speech was.

“He was wrapped up in his family.  His two boys would come up to the House just before adjournment, and loiter about his desk with their books in their hands.  After the House adjourned, other members would go off in cars or carriages, or walk down the avenue in groups.  But Garfield, with a boy on each side of him, would walk down Capitol Hill, as we would say in the country ‘cross-lots,’ all three chatting together on equal terms.