the platform that hid my shaking legs from the audience." Such experiences are not uncommon in the career of men afterward noted for their ease in public speaking. I can recall such, and so doubtless can any man of academic or college training. I wish to impress upon my young reader that Garfield was indebted for what he became to earnest work. While upon the subject of public speaking I am naturally led to speak of young Garfield's religious associations. His mind has already been impressed with the importance of the religious element, and he felt that no life would be complete without it. He had joined the Church of the Disciples, the same to which his uncle belonged, and was baptized in a little stream that runs into the Chagrin River. The creed of this class of religious believers is one likely to commend itself in most respects to the general company of Christians; but as this volume is designed to steer clear of sect or party, I do not hold any further reference to it necessary. What concerns us more is, that young Garfield, in accordance with the liberal usages of the Disciples, was invited on frequent occasions to officiate as a lay preacher in the absence of the regular pastor of the Church of the Disciples at Hiram. Though often officiating as a preacher, I do not find that young Garfield ever had the ministry in view. On the other hand, he early formed the design of studying for the legal profession, as he gradually did, being admitted to the bar of Cuyahoga County, in 1860, when himself president of Hiram College. So passed three busy and happy years. Young Garfield had but few idle moments. In teaching others, in pursuing his own education, in taking part in the work of the literary society, and in Sunday exhortations, his time was well filled up. But neither his religion nor his love of study made him less companionable. He was wonderfully popular. His hearty grasp of the hand, his genial manner, his entire freedom from conceit, his readiness to help others, made him a general favorite. Some young men, calling themselves religious, assume a sanctimonious manner, that repels, but James Garfield never was troubled in this way. He believed that "Religion never was designed To make our pleasures less," and was always ready to take part in social pleasures, provided they did not interfere with his work. And all this while, with all his homely surroundings, he had high thoughts for company. He wrote to a student, afterward his own successor to the presidency, words that truly describe his own aspirations and habits of mind. "Tell me, Burke, do you not feel a spirit stirring within you that longs _to know, to do, and to dare_, to hold converse with the great world of thought, and hold before you some high and noble object to which the vigor of your mind and the strength of your arm may be given? Do you not have longings like these which you breathe to no