From Canal Boy to President
or the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield
by Horatio Alger, Jr.
Author Of Ragged Dick; Luck And Pluck; Tattered Tom, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED.
NEW YORK
AMERICAN PUBLISHERS CORPORATION
310-318 SIXTH AVENUE
1881
James A Garfield, at the Age of 16.Copied by permission of J.F. RYDER, Cleveland, G.
TO
Harry And James Garfield
Whose Private Sorrow Is The Public Grief, This Memorial Of TheirIllustrious Father Is Inscribed With The Warmest Sympathy.
General Preface.
The present series of volumes has been undertakenwith the view of supplying the want of aclass of books for children, of a vigorous, manlytone, combined with a plain and concise mode ofnarration. The writings of Charles Dickens havebeen selected as the basis of the scheme, onaccount of the well-known excellence of his portrayalof children, and the interests connectedwith children—qualities which have given hisvolumes their strongest hold on the hearts ofparents. These delineations having thus receivedthe approval of readers of mature age, it seemeda worthy effort to make the young also participantsin the enjoyment of these classic fictions, tointroduce the children of real life to these beautifulchildren of the imagination.
With this view, the career of Little Nell andher Grandfather, Oliver, Little Paul, FlorenceDombey, Smike, and the Child-Wife, have beendetached from the large mass of matter withwhich they were originally connected, and presented,in the author's own language, to a newclass of readers, to whom the little volumes willwe doubt not, be as attractive as the larger originalshave so long proved to the general public.We have brought down these famous stories fromthe library to the nursery—the parlor table to thechild's hands—having a precedent for the proceeding,if one be needed, in the somewhat similarwork, the Tales from Shakespeare, by one ofthe choicest of English authors and most reverentialof scholars, Charles Lamb.
Newtonville, Mass.
Preface.
If I am asked why I add one to the numerousLives of our dead President, I answer, in the wordsof Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, because "our annalsafford no such incentive to youth as does his life,and it will become one of the Republic's householdstories."
I have conceived, therefore, that a biography,written with a view to interest young people inthe facts of his great career, would be a praiseworthyundertaking. The biography of GeneralGarfield, however imperfectly executed, can notbut be profitable to the reader. In this story,which I have made as attractive as I am able, Imake no claim to originality. I have made freeuse of such materials as came within my reach, includingincidents and reminiscences made publicduring the last summer, and I trust I have succeeded,in a measure, in conveying a correct ideaof a character whose nobility we have onlylearned to appreciate since death has snatched ourleader from us.
I take pleasure in acknowledging my obligationsto two Lives of Garfield, one by Edmund Kirke,the other by Major J.M. Bundy. Such of myreaders as desire a more extended account of th