I think he noticed and numbered every button on our coats.

A friend of mine was walking with him through Cleveland one day, when Garfield stopped and darted down a cellar-way, asking his companion to follow, and briefly pausing to explain himself.
The sign, 'Saws and Files,' was over the door, and in the depths was heard a regular clicking sound.

'I think this fellow is cutting files,' said he, 'and I have never seen a file cut.
"Down they went, and, sure enough, there was a man recutting an old file; and they stayed ten minutes, and found out all about the process.
Garfield would never go by anything without understanding it.
"Mr.Garfield was very fond of lecturing in the school.

He spoke two or three times a week, on all manner of topics, generally scientific, though sometimes literary or historical.

He spoke with great freedom, never writing out what he had to say, and I now think that his lectures were a rapid compilation of his current reading, and that he threw it into this form partly for the purpose of impressing it upon his own mind.
"His facility of speech was learned when he was a pupil at Hiram.