“What is his name?”

“James A. Garfield. His home is in Ohio.”

“Well, send him along.”

On the following day James called upon the tailor, frankly told him his circumstances, and promised to pay him for the clothes as early as possible. He could not fix the date.

“Very well,” said Mr. Haskell, who was thoroughly pleased with James’s appearance. “Take your own time; don’t worry yourself about the debt. Go on with your education; and when you have some money that you have no other use for, pay me.” James got his suit of clothes, returned to college, and paid the debt in due time, to the entire satisfaction of the tailor.

After returning to college, James looked about for pecuniary relief. Debts on his second year had already accumulated, and now it was certain that he would receive no loans to meet them from his brother. He thought of the cordial and friendly doctor who examined him about six years before, and encouraged him to acquire an education,—Dr. J. P. Robinson, now of Cleveland, Ohio. He sat down and wrote to the jolly doctor, stating his pressing wants and future purposes, telling him of his life insurance, and of his expected connection with Hiram Institute as teacher, when he would be able to liquidate the debt. It is enough to say that Dr. Robinson cheerfully loaned him the money.

At the close of his first collegiate year James visited his mother in Ohio. She was then living with her daughter, who was married and settled in Solon. It is not necessary to rehearse the details of this visit: the reader can imagine the mutual joy it occasioned much better than we can describe it. Imagination cannot exaggerate the satisfaction his mother found in meeting her son again, so near the ministry, where she had come to think his field of usefulness would be found.

In college James’s anti-slavery sentiments grew stronger, if possible. Charles Sumner was in Congress, dealing heavy blows against slavery, assailing the fugitive-slave bill with great power and effect, claiming that “freedom is national, and slavery sectional,” denouncing the “crime against Kansas,” and losing no opportunity to expose the guilt and horrors of Southern bondage. Outside of Congress he made speeches, urging that the Whig party should attack and overthrow American slavery. James admired the fearless, grand public career of Sumner, and also despised the criminal support the Democratic party gave to slavery, and the truckling, timid, compromising course of the leaders of the Whig party. Then, in the fall of 1855, John Z. Goodrich, who was a member of Congress from Western Massachusetts, delivered a political address in Williams-town upon the history of the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, and the efforts of the handful of Republicans then in Congress to defeat the Missouri compromise. James was profoundly impressed by the facts and logic of that speech, and he said to a class-mate, on leaving the hall:

“This subject is new to me; I am going to know all about it.”

He sent for documents, studied them thoroughly, and was fully prepared to join the new Republican party, and the nomination of John C. Fremont for President of the United States. The students called a meeting in support of Fremont, and James was invited to address them. The scope and power of his speech, packed with facts and history, showed that he had canvassed the subject with his accustomed ability, and even his classmates, who knew him so well, were surprised.

“The country will hear from him yet, and slavery will get some hard knocks from him,” remarked a class- mate.

Just afterwards the country was thrown into the greatest excitement by the cowardly attack of Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, upon Charles Sumner. Enraged by his attacks upon slavery, and urged forward, no doubt, by Southern ruffians, Brooks attacked him with a heavy cane while Sumner was writing at his