It is well known that among poets Tennyson was his favorite, so that in
after years, when at fifteen minutes' notice, on the first anniversary
of Lincoln's assassination, he was called upon to move an adjournment of
the House, as a mark of respect to the martyred President, he was able
from memory to quote in his brief speech, as applicable to Lincoln, the
poet's description of some

"Divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green,
Who breaks his birth's invidious bars,
And grasped the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil stars;
Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The center of a world's desire."

I am only repeating the remark made by many when I call attention to the
fitness of this description to Garfield himself.

Our young student was fortunate in possessing a most retentive memory.
What he liked, especially in the works of his favorite poet, was so
impressed upon his memory that he could recite extracts by the hour.
This will enable the reader to understand how thoroughly he studied, and