But now a great event in the family took place. Thomas, who had just attained his majority, had returned from a trip to Michigan with a sum of ready money, and wanted to build his mother a new house. Life in the cabin had, in his estimation, been endured long enough. Some of the materials for a frame building were already accumulated, and under the directions of a carpenter the work was begun and rapidly pushed to completion. In all these proceedings James took an intense interest, and developed such a liking for tools and timber as could but signify a member of the Builders’ Guild. He resolved to be a carpenter; and from this day on was never for a moment without an object in life. The ambition to “be something” took many different turns, but was a force which, once created, could never be put down. The care and skill requisite to putting a house together, fitting the rafters into place, and joining part to part with mathematical precision, gave him an idea that these things were of a higher order than farm labor. Plain digging would no longer do; there must be a better chance to contrive something, to conjure up plans and ways and means in the brain, and show forth ideas by the skill of the hand. Consequently a variety of tools began to accumulate about James Garfield. There was a corner somewhere which, in imitation of the great carpenter who built their house, he called his “shop;” a rough bench, perhaps, with a few planes, and mallets, and chisels, and saws, and the like, to help in mending the gates and doors about the place. No independent farm can get along without such help, and of course these services were in constant demand. The dexterity thus acquired soon led to earnings abroad. The first money Garfield ever received in this way was one dollar, which the village carpenter paid him for planing a hundred boards at a cent apiece. His active and earnest performance of every duty brought him plenty of offers, and between the ages of twelve and fifteen years he helped to put up a number of buildings in that district of country, some of which are standing to this day.