Still another instance of Garfield's kindness of heart is shown in the following story:-- One time when he was about to deliver an address at Cornell, a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder, and turning about, he saw Brown, his ex-scout and old boat companion. He was a sad-looking wreck--with bleared eyes, bloated face, and garments that were half tatters. He had come, he said, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, to that quiet place to die, and now he could die in peace because he had seen his 'gineral.' Garfield gave him money and got him quarters among some kind people, and left him, telling him to try to be a man; but, in any event, to let him know if he ever needed further help. A year or more passed, and no word came from Brown; but then the superintendent of the public hospital at Buffalo wrote the general that a man was there very sick, who, in his delirium, talked of him, of the Ohio Canal, and of the Sandy Valley expedition. Garfield knew at once that it was Brown, and immediately forwarded funds to the hospital, asking that he should have every possible care and comfort. The letter which acknowledged the remittance announced that the poor fellow had died--died, muttering, in his delirium, the name 'Jim Garfield.' Garfield paid his funeral expenses. "Poor Brown!" he exclaimed, "he had a rare combination of good and bad qualities, with strong traits, a ruined man; and yet, underneath the ruins, a great deal of generous, self-sacrificing noble-heartedness." CHAPTER XLVI. Remarks of a Personal Friend.--Reminiscences of the President's Cousin Henry Boynton.--Garfield as a Freemason. Said a personal friend,-- "No one who saw President Garfield after his installation in the White House can fail to have observed the great change which his accession to power had occasioned in him. Only at intervals did his bright joyousness shine out again, as at the pleasant home at Mentor. The very day after he became President, the struggle for the spoils of office began with a fierceness hitherto unparalleled in all the strife of that kind which has been seen at Washington. He was half-maddened by his desire to do justice to all the contending factions. It was this feeling which made him slow to give irrevocable decisions. I was at the White House one morning, and he referred to his anxiety not to take a step in haste which he might repent at leisure. The humor of his own cautious slowness brought back the twinkle in his eye, the smile on the rosy lip. 'I don't know when I shall get around to that,' he said. 'You know, there's no telling when the Mississippi River will reach a given point.' The sluggish movement of the great Father of Waters was hit off to the life by this impromptu epigram."