Every now and then he would get a hit, and he muffed his ball and lost his hat as a regular thing.[A] He was left-handed, too, and that made him seem all the clumsier.

But he was most powerful and very quick, and it was easy for us to understand how it was that he had acquired the reputation of whipping all the other mule-drivers on the canal, and of making himself the hero of that thoroughfare, when he followed its tow-path, only ten years earlier.
[Footnote A: I have seen it somewhere stated that when a Congressman at Washington he retained his interest in the game of base-ball, and always was in attendance when it was possible, at a game between two professional clubs.] "No matter how old the pupils were, Garfield always called us by our first names, and kept himself on the most intimate terms with all.

He played with us freely, and we treated him out of the class-room just about as we did one another.

Yet he was a most strict disciplinarian, and enforced the rules like a martinet.

He combined an affectionate and confiding manner with respect for order in a most successful manner.