The influence of such a woman upon an intellectual young man can scarcely be estimated, or over-estimated. The world is richer and nobler for such women. Garfield never forgot her influence. The year he died, he said at a Williams College banquet held in Cleveland, January 10, 1881: "I am glad to say, reverently, in the presence of the many ladies here to-night, that I owe to a woman, who has long since been asleep, perhaps a higher debt intellectually than I owe to any one else. After that comes my debt to Williams College." He used to say, "Give me a log hut with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus, and libraries without him." After two years at Hiram College, Garfield decided to enter some eastern college, and wrote to Yale, Brown, and Williams. Their replies are shown in his letter to a friend at this time. "Their answers are now before me. All tell me I can graduate in two years. They are all brief business notes; but President Hopkins concludes with this sentence: 'If you come here, we shall be glad to do what we can for you.' Other things being so nearly equal, this sentence, which seems to be a kind of friendly grasp of the hand, has settled the question for me. I shall start for Williams next week." A kind sentence gave to Williams a distinguished honor for all coming years. Garfield had not only paid his way while at Hiram, but he had saved three hundred and fifty dollars for his course at Williams. Here he earned money, as he had at Hiram, by teaching, and borrowed a few hundreds from Dr. J. P. Robinson of Cleveland, Ohio, offering a life insurance policy as security. In college, says Dr. Hopkins, "as General Garfield was broad in his scholarship, so was he in his sympathies. No one thought of him as a recluse or as bookish. Not _given_ to athletic sports, he was fond of them. His mind was open to the impression of natural scenery, and, as his constitution was vigorous, he knew well the fine points on the mountains around us. He was also social in his disposition, both giving and inspiring confidence. So true is this of his intercourse with the officers of the college, as well as with others, that he was never even suspected of anything low or trickish.... General Garfield gave himself to study with a zest and delight wholly unknown to those who find in it a routine. A religious man and a man of principle, he pursued of his own accord the ends proposed by the institution. He was prompt, frank, manly, social, in his tendencies; combining active exercise with habits of study, and thus did for himself what it is the object of a college to enable every young man to do,--he made himself a MAN."