To pass over Garfield’s college life without mention of the influence of President Hopkins upon his intellectual growth, would be to omit its most important feature. No man liveth to himself alone. The intellectual life of great men is largely determined and directed by the few superior minds with which they come in contact during formative periods. The biography of almost any thinker will show that his intellectual growth was by epochs, and that each epoch was marked out and created by the influence of some maturer mind. The first person to exercise this power is, in most cases, the mother. This was the case with Garfield. The second person who left an indelible impression on his mental life, and supplied it with new nourishment and stimulant, was Miss Almeda Booth. The third person who exercised an overpowering personal influence upon him was Mark Hopkins. When Garfield came to Williams, his thought was strong, but uncultured. The crudities and irregularities of his unpolished manners were also present in his mind. He had his mental eye-sight, but he saw men as trees walking. But under the influence of Hopkins, the scales fell from his eyes. The vast and powerful intellect of the man who was stepping to the front rank of the world’s thinkers, imparted its wealth of ideas to the big Ohioan. Through President Hopkins, Garfield’s thought rose into the upper sky. Under the inspiration of the teacher’s lectures and private conversation, the pupil’s mind unfolded its immense calyx toward the sun of speculative thought. From this teacher Garfield derived the great ideas of law, of the regularity and system of the Universe, of the analogy between man and nature, of God as the First Cause, of the foundation of right conduct, of the correlation of forces, of the philosophy of history. In after years, Garfield always said that whatever perception he had of general ideas came from this great man. One winter in Washington the National Teacher’s Association was in session, and Garfield frequently dropped in to take a share in the discussion. One day he said: “You are making a grand mistake in education in this country. You put too much money into brick and mortar, and not enough into brains. You build palatial school-houses with domes and towers; supply them with every thing beautiful and luxuriant, and then put puny men inside. The important thing is not what is taught, but the teacher. It is the teacher’s personality which is the educator. I had rather dwell six months in a tent, with Mark Hopkins, and live on bread and water, than to take a six years’ course in the grandest brick and mortar university on the continent.”