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.