So the new Administration entered upon what promised to be a successful course. I can not help recording, as a singular circumstance, that the three highest officers were ex-teachers. Of Garfield's extended services as teacher, beginning with the charge of a district school in the wilderness, and ending with the presidency of a college, we already know. Reference has also been made to the early experience of the Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur, in managing a country school. To this it may be added that Mr. Blaine, too, early in life was a teacher in an academy, and, as may readily be supposed, a successful one. It is seldom in other countries that similar honors crown educational workers. It may be mentioned, however, that Louis Philippe, afterward King of the French, while an exile in this country, gave instruction in his native language. It is not, however, every ruler of boys that is qualified to become a ruler of men. Yet, in our own country, probably a majority of our public men have served in this capacity. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TRAGIC END. I should like to end my story here, and feel that it was complete. I should like with my countrymen to be still looking forward with interest to the successful results of an administration, guided by the experienced statesman whose career we have followed step by step from its humble beginnings. But it can not be. On the second of July, in the present year, a startling rumor was borne on the wings of the lightning to the remotest parts of the land: "President Garfield has been assassinated!" The excitement was only paralleled by that which prevailed in 1865, when Abraham Lincoln was treacherously killed by an assassin. But in this later case the astonishment was greater, and all men asked, "What can it mean?" We were in a state of profound peace. No wars nor rumors of war disturbed the humble mind, and the blow was utterly unexpected and inexplicable. The explanation came soon enough. It was the work of a wretched political adventurer, who, inflated by an overweening estimate of his own abilities and importance, had made a preposterous claim to two high political offices--the post of Minister to Austria, and Consul to Paris--and receiving no encouragement in either direction, had deliberately made up his mind to "remove" the President, as he termed it, in the foolish hope that his chances of gaining office would be better under another administration.