Concord meeting-house; we then immediately went before them and passed the bridge, just before a party of them, to the number of about two hundred, arrived; they there left about one-half of their two hundred at the bridge, and proceeded with the rest toward Col. Barrett's, about two miles from the said bridge; and the troops that were stationed there, observing our approach, marched back over the bridge and then took up some of the planks; we then hastened our march toward the bridge, and when we had got near the bridge they fired on our men, first three guns, one after the other, and then a considerable number more; and then, and not before (having orders from our commanding officers not to fire till we were fired upon), we fired upon the regulars and they retreated. On their retreat through the town of Lexington to Charlestown, they ravaged and destroyed private property, and burnt three houses, one barn, and one shop."

The act of signature to that paper was one of the sublimest courage. It identified the leaders of the fight; it admitted and justified the act of firing on the troops of the government! It seemed almost equal to putting the executioner's noose around their necks. But to such men, life was a feather-weight compared to principle. If the Colonies were to be roused to rebellion and revolution, the truth of that fight at Concord bridge had to be laid before the people, accompanied by proofs that could not be questioned. The patriots not only did the deed but shouldered the responsibility. Of the signers with Abraham Garfield, John Hoar was the great-grandfather of Senator George F. Hoar, presiding officer of the convention which nominated James A. Garfield for the Presidency.

Solomon Garfield, brother of Abraham, and great-grandfather of the subject of this history, had married Sarah Stimpson in 1766, and was living at Weston, Massachusetts, when the war broke out. Little is known of him except that he was a soldier of the Revolution, and came out of the war alive, but impoverished by the loss of his property. He soon moved to Otsego > County, New York, where one of his sons, Thomas Garfield, married. It was on the latter's farm, in December, 1799, that was born Abram Garfield, the ninth lineal descendant of the Puritan, > and father of the man whose name and fame are henceforth the

V

heritage of all mankind. Two years after the birth of Abram, his father died suddenly and tragically, leaving his young widow and several children in most adverse circumstances. When about twelve years old, Abram, a stout sun-burnt little fellow, fell in with a playmate two years younger than himself, named Eliza < Ballou, also a widow's child whose mother had recently moved to Worcester, Otsego County, New York, where the Garfields were living. In that childhood friendship lay the germ of a romantic love, of which the fruit was to be more important to men and to history than that of the most splendid nuptials ever negotiated in the courts of kings.

James Ballou, Eliza's older brother, impatient of the wretched poverty in which they dwelt, persuaded his mother to emigrate to Ohio. The emigrant wagon, with its jaded horses, its muddy white cover, its much jostled load of household articles, and its sad-eyed and forlorn occupants! How the picture rises before the eyes! What a history it tells of poverty and misfortune; of disappointment and hardship; of a wretched home left behind, yet dear to memory because left behind; of a still harder life ahead in the western wilderness toward which it wends its weary way! More showy equipages there have been. The Roman chariot, the English stage-coach, and the palace railway train, have each been taken up and embalmed in literature. But the emigrant wagon, richer in association, closer to the heart-throb, more familiar with tears than smiles, has found no poet who would stoop to the lowly theme. In a few years the emigrant wagon will be a thing of the past, and forgotten; but though we bid it farewell forever, let it have a high place in the American heart and history, as the precursor of our cities and our civilization.

Thus the boy and girl were separated. Abram Garfield was brought up as a "bound boy" by a farmer named Stone. While he was filling the place of chore boy on the New York farm, Eliza Ballou, having something more than an ordinary education, taught a summer school in the Ohio wilderness. It is said that one day, in a terrific storm, a red bolt of lightning shot through the cabin roof, smiting teacher and scholars to the floor, thus breaking

up the school. The spirit of tragedy seems to have hovered over her entire life.

Love laughs at difficulties and delays, and in a few years after the Ballou emigration, Abram Garfield, a "stalwart" of the earlier and better kind, tramped his muddy way along the same roads, across the same rivers, and—strange, was it not?—to the very cabin where the emigrant wagon had stopped. Swift flew the shining days of courtship; and Eliza Ballou became Eliza Ballou Garfield, the mother of the President.

Eliza Ballou was a lineal descendant of Maturin Ballou, a French Huguenot, who, about the year 1685, upon the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, fled from the smiling vineyards of France to the rugged but liberty-giving land of America. Joining the colony of Roger Williams, at Cumberland, Rhode Island, which had adopted for its principle "In civil matters, law; in religious matters, liberty," he built a queer old church, from the pulpit of which he thundered forth his philippics against religious intolerance. The building still stands, and is a curiosity of architecture. Not a nail was used in its construction. For generation after generation the descendants of this man were eloquent preachers, occupying the very pulpit of their ancestor. Their names are famous. They were men of powerful intellects, thorough culture, and splendid. characters. Their posterity has enriched this country with many distinguished lawyers, soldiers, and politicians. They They were a superior family from the first, uniting to brilliant minds a spotless integrity, an indomitable energy, and the burning and eloquent gifts of the orator. The best known member of the family is Rev Hosca Ballou, the founder of the Universalist Church in America, of whom Eliza Ballou was a grand-niece. He was a man of wide intellectual activity, a prolific and powerful writer, and made a marked impress on the thought of his generation.

From this brief view of the ancestry of James A. Garfield, it is easy to see that there was the hereditary preparation for a great man. From the father's side came great physical power, large bones, big muscles, and an immense brain. From the father's line

also came the heritage of profound conviction, of a lofty and re