Upon my explaining my loss, and describing the pocketbook, the young man handed it over.

That young man," the President added, turning to his devoted physician, "was Dr.Bliss.He saved me for college." "Yes," said the doctor, "and if I hadn't found your ten dollars you wouldn't have become President of the United States." Many a true word is spoken in jest.

It might have happened that the boy would have been so depressed by the loss of his money that he would have given up his plan of going to Hiram and returned home to fill an humbler place in the world.
But it is time to return from this digression and resume our narrative.
Devoted to his profession, young Garfield had given but little attention to politics.

But in the political campaign of 1857 and 1858 he became interested in the exciting political questions which agitated the community, and, taking the stump, he soon acquired the reputation of a forcible and logical stump orator.

This drew the attention of the voters to him, and in 1859 he was tendered a nomination to the Ohio Senate from the counties of Portage and Summit.