"Another telegram from Washington!'

"And then, in the awful stillness of the crisis, taking advantage of the hesitation of the crowd, whose steps had been arrested a moment, a right arm was lifted skyward, and a voice, clear and steady, loud and distinct, spoke out:

"Fellow-citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judg ment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow-citizens! God reigns and the Government at Washington still lives!'

"The effect was tremendous. The crowd stood rooted to the ground with awe, gazing at the motionless orator, and thinking of God and the security of the Government in that hour. As the boiling waters subside and settle to the sea, when some strong wind beats it down, so the tumult of the people sank and became still. All took it as a divine omen. It was a triumph of eloquence, inspired by the moment, such as falls to but one man's lot, and that but once in a century. The genius of Webster, Choate, Everett, Seward, never reached it. What might have happened

had the surging and maddened mob been let loose, none can tell. The man for the crisis was on the spot, more potent than Napoleon's guns at Paris. I inquired what was his name.

"The answer came in a low whisper, 'It is General Garfield, of Ohio.'"

It was a most dramatic scene, and a wonderful exhibition of the power of one man of intellect over a furious mob.

How would the thrilling intensity of the moment have been increased, had some prophet, standing beside the inspired speaker, predicted that a little more than sixteen years later he who had calmed the crowd would himself fall a victim to violence, while filling the same high post as the martyred Lincoln. Well has it been said that the wildest dream of the romancer pales beside the solemn surprise of the Actual. Not one among the thousands there assembled, not the speaker himself, would have considered such a statement within the range of credibility. Alas, that it should have been!-that the monstrous murder of the good Lincoln should have been repeated in these latter days, and the nation have come a second time a mourner!

Will it be believed that Garfield's arrival and his speech had been quite accidental, though we must also count it as Providential, since it stayed the wild excesses of an infuriated mob. He had only arrived from Washington that morning, and after breakfast had strolled through the crowded streets, in entire ignorance of the great gathering at the Exchange building.

He turned down Broadway, and when he saw the great concourse of people, he kept on, to learn what had brought them together. Butler was speaking when he arrived, and a friend who recognized him beckoned him to come up there, above the heads of the multitude.

When he heard the wild cries for "Vengeance !" and noticed the swaying, impassioned movements of the crowd, he saw the danger that menaced the public order, and in a moment of inspiration he rose, and with a gesture challenged the attention of the crowd. What he said he could not have told five minutes afterward. "I only know," he said afterward, "that I drew the lightning from that crowd, and brought it back to reason."

CHAPTER XXIX.

GARFIELD AS A LAWYER.

IN the crowded activities of Garfield's life, my raders may possibly have forgotten that he was a lawyer, having, after a course of private study during his presidency of Hiram College, been admitted to the bar, in 1861, by the Supreme Court of Ohio. When the war broke out he was about to withdraw from his position as teacher, and go into practice in Cleveland; but, as a Roman writer has expressed it, "Inter arma silent leges." So law gave way to arms, and the incipient lawyer became a general.

When the soldier put off his armor it was to enter Congress, and instead of practicing law, Garfield helped to frame laws.

But in 1865 there came an extraordinary occasion, which led to the Ohio Congressman entering upon his long delayed profession. And here I quote from the work of Major Bundy, already

referred to: "About that time that great lawyer, Judge Jeremiah S. Black, as the attorney of the Ohio Democrats who had been opposing the war, came to his friend Garfield, and said that there were some men imprisoned in Indiana for conspiracy against the Government in trying to prevent enlistments and to encourage desertion. They had been tried in 1864, while the war was going on, and by a military commission sitting in Indiana, where there was no war, they had been sentenced to death. Mr. Lincoln commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life, and they were put into State's prison in accordance with the commutation. They then took out a writ of habeas corpus, to test the constitutionality and legality of their trial, and the judges in the Circuit Court had disagreed, there being two of them, and had certified their disagreement to the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Black said to Garfield that he had seen what Garfield had said in Congress, and asked him if he was willing to say in an argument in the Supreme Court what he had advocated in Congress.

"To which Garfield replied: 'It depends on your case altogether.'