wonderfully blessed in the discretion of my wife. She is one of the
coolest and best-balanced women I ever saw. She is unstampedable. There
has not been one solitary instance in my public career when I suffered
in the smallest degree for any remark she ever made. It would have been
perfectly natural for a woman often to say something that could be
misinterpreted; but, without any design, and with the intelligence and
coolness of her character, she has never made the slightest mistake that
I ever heard of. With the competition that has been against me, such
discretion has been a real blessing."

Public men who have risen from humble beginnings often suffer from the
mistakes of wives who have remained stationary, and are unfitted to
sympathize with them in the larger life of their husbands. But as James
A. Garfield grew in the public esteem, and honors crowded upon him, step
by step his wife kept pace with him, and was at all times a fitting and
sympathetic companion and helpmeet.

They commenced housekeeping in a neat little cottage fronting the
college campus; and so their wedded life began. It was a modest home,
but a happy one, and doubtless both enjoyed more happy hours than in the
White House, even had the last sorrowful tragedy never been enacted. As
President, James A. Garfield belonged to the nation; as the head of
Hiram College, to his family. Greatness has its penalties, and a low
estate its compensations.




CHAPTER XIX.