"While rambling over this place the correspondent came upon this near
relative of Garfield, smaller in stature than he was, but in features
bearing a striking resemblance to him.

"General Garfield and I were like brothers," he said, as he turned from
giving some directions to his farm hands, now sowing the fall grain upon
ground which his cousin had first helped to break. "His father died
yonder, within a stone's throw of us, when the son was but a year and a
half old. He knew no other father than mine, who watched over the family
as if it had been his own. This very house in which I live was as much
his home as it was mine.

"Over there," said he, pointing to the brick school-house in the grove
of maples, around which the happy children were playing, "is where he
and I both started for school. I have read a statement that he could not
read or write until he was nineteen. He could do both before he was
nine, and before he was twelve, so familiar was he with the Indian
history of the country, that he had named every tree in the orchard,
which his father planted as he was born, with the name of some Indian
chief, and even debated in societies, religion, and other topics with
men. One favorite tree of his he named Tecumseh, and the branches of
many of these old trees have been cut since his promotion to the
Presidency by relic-hunters, and carried away.

"Gen. Garfield was a remarkable boy as well as man. It is not possible
to tell you the fight he made amid poverty for a place in life, and how
gradually he obtained it. When he was a boy he would rather read than
work. But he became a great student. He had to work after he was twelve
years of age. In those days we were all poor, and it took hard knocks to
get on. He worked clearing the fields yonder with his brother, and then