"They might as well have repeated to him the Creed and the Ten Commandments, for Garfield himself sprang into the boat and called to Brown to follow. He took the helm and laid her bow across the stream, but the swift current swept them downward. After incredible labor they made the opposite bank, but far below the steamboat. Closely hugging the shore, they now crept up the stream, and fastening the line to a tree, rigged a windlass, and finally warped the vessel again into deep water. "All that night, and all the next day, and all the following night they struggled with the furious river, Garfield never but once leaving the helm, and then for only a few hours' sleep, which he snatched in his clothes in the day-time. At last they rounded to at the Union camp, and then went up a cheer that might have been heard all over Kentucky. His waiting men, frantic with joy, seized their glorious commander, and were with difficulty prevented from bearing him on their shoulders to his quarters." The little army was saved from starvation by the canal-boy, who had not forgotten his old trade. He had risked his life a dozen times over in making the perilous trip, which has been so graphically described in the passages I have quoted. But for his early and humble experience, he never would have been able to bring the little steamer up the foaming river. Little did he dream in the days when, as a boy, he guided the _Evening Star_, that fifteen years hence, an officer holding an important command he would use the knowledge then acquired to save a famishing army. We can not wonder that his men should have been devotedly attached to such a commander. I have said that the Kentucky campaign was not one of the most important operations of the civil war, but its successful issue was most welcome, coming at the time it did. It came after a series of disasters, which had produced wide-spread despondency, and even dimmed the courage of President Lincoln. It kindled hope in the despondent, and nerved patriotic arms to new and vigorous efforts. "Why did Garfield, in two weeks, do what it would have taken one of you Regular folks two months to accomplish?" asked the President, of a distinguished army officer. "Because he was not educated at West Point," answered the officer, laughing. "No," replied Mr. Lincoln; "that wasn't the reason. It was because, when a boy, he had to work for a living." This was literally true. To his struggling boyhood and early manhood, and the valuable experience it brought him, Garfield was indebted for the strength and practical knowledge which brought him safely through a campaign conducted against fearful odds. His country was not ungrateful. He received the thanks of the commanding general for services which "called into action the highest qualities of a soldier--fortitude, perseverance, courage," and a few weeks later a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers, to date from the battle of Middle Creek.