Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning, James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident, in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death--and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell! Before him desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. [Illustration] GEMS FROM JAS. A. GARFIELD. If there be one thing upon this broad earth that mankind love and admire, better than another, it is a brave man--it is a man who dares look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil. Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Things don't turn up in this world till somebody turns them up. [Illustration] AT THE FIRESIDE. At nightfall by the firelight's cheer My little Margaret sits me near, And begs me tell of things that were When I was little just like her. Ah, little lips you touch the spring Of sweetest sad remembering, And hearth and heart flash all aglow With ruddy tints of long ago. I at my father's fireside sit, Youngest of all who circle it, And beg him tell me what did he When he was little just like me. JOHN D. LONG THE FROST SPIRIT. JOHN G. WHITTIER. He comes,--he comes,--the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields, And the brown hill's withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees Where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds which follow wherever he goes, Have shaken them down to earth. [Illustration]