Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be
President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and
with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to
General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and
explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large
his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest letter from an
information-seeking boy. General Garfield answered warmly and fully.
Edward showed the letter to his father, who told the boy that it was
valuable and he should keep it. This was a new idea. He followed it
further; if one such letter was valuable, how much more valuable would
be a hundred! If General Garfield answered him, would not other famous
men? Why not begin a collection of autograph letters? Everybody
collected something.

Edward had collected postage-stamps, and the hobby had, incidentally,
helped him wonderfully in his study of geography. Why should not
autograph letters from famous persons be of equal service in his
struggle for self-education? Not simple autographs--they were
meaningless; but actual letters which might tell him something useful.
It never occurred to the boy that these men might not answer him.

So he took his _Encyclopaedia_--its trustworthiness now established in
his mind by General Garfield's letter---and began to study the lives of
successful men and women. Then, with boyish frankness, he wrote on
some mooted question in one famous person's life; he asked about the
date of some important event in another's, not given in the
_Encyclopaedia_; or he asked one man why he did this or why some other
man did that.

Most interesting were, of course, the replies. Thus General Grant