been heard or read by him as household words. While none of these things can be said to have made him the statesman and leader which he afterwards became, yet they may have had some educating power upon the genius which in 1856 so suddenly beamed forth.

In 1842, James spent a year in the family of the Hon. Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, who was by marriage a cousin of James' mother, and there attended school preparatory to his entrance into Washington College.

The removal of his family to Washington, the county seat, when Ephraim L. Blaine was elected Prothonotary, was an especially favorable opportunity for him to attend and secure the most complete advantages for a college education. For years it had been his ambition, and his father was equally anxious that all his children should have a thorough collegiate training.

But in this there was nothing strange or startlingly precocious. Hundreds of other boys have yearned for and obtained the same privilege. In one thing only could he be esteemed to excel other boys of his age. He was thorough. Having anything to do he did it as well as the circumstances would possibly allow.

One of his teachers still living, relates how she gave him a series of grammatical rules to commit to memory. He came to the recitation with only one learned. When she asked him why he had neglected four-fifths of his lesson, he showed her that he had industriously spent the entire time in trying to understand what the first verse meant. He could not be content with mere words. He wished to know the reason and purpose.

CHAPTER V.

College History.-College Life at Little Washington.-Blaine's Youth. His Standing.-Treatment by College Mates.-List of his Class.-Letter from him at the Centennial Celebration.His Latent Talent.-Graduation in 1847.-Necessity of Earning his own Support.

With all New England's well-earned reputation for learning, and great educational privileges, it may be gravely doubted if a county can be found in any Eastern State, where so many schools and academies flourish as in Washington County, Pa. Schools, academies, and colleges were imported with the first inhabitants. In 1780, an academy was established in a log cabin at the county seat, and from it graduated some of the most able orators in the Religious and Political arenas of the West.

Among these, many institutions have preserved a high social standard of education, and which have made for the people of the county a reputation for education, and general intelligence, much to be envied, the most important of those still standing is Washington and Jefferson College, representing two old institutions united in 1865.

Washington College was founded in 1780, and chartered by the Legislature in 1806, four years after the charter of Jefferson College in Cannonsberg in the same county. The history of this college, as written by Rev. James I. Brownson, D. D., of Washington, Pa., is a most interesting document, and shows how great an aid such a college may be to a community and a nation. Founded by Rev. Matthew

Brown, D. D., with a self-sacrificing heroism which was most remarkable, and sustained by men who assisted it at continual loss to themselves, it gathered in the most gifted young men of the West, and from it they went forth to the bar, the pulpit, the marts of trade, the chairs of colleges, the judge's bench, seats in Congress, author's honors, and fields of battle. These unusual educational privileges called into the county a highly cultivated class of people desiring to educate their children. It elevated the standard of legal practice and acumen in the courts, and greatly raised the average scholarship in the pulpits.

It began with a little upper room. Now it has its stately edifices with all the appliances and facilities for the most advanced collegiate course, and an endowment of nearly 300,000 dollars. Dr. Brownson in the history of the college published in 1882, says:

"Any other county of the commonwealth, if not also of the nation, may be challeged for the production of an equal list of educated sons, whether to fill her own high places or to lead society in other counties, and states. And receiving from far and near beyond her own borders the youth of other communities, she has sent them back by hundreds, fitted by thorough collegiate training for every variety of professional and other responsible service. More than three thousand graduates, besides an almost equal number who have taken a partial course, embracing fourteen hundred ministers of the gospel, seven hundred and fifty lawyers, and four hundred physicians, six or eight United States Senators, six cabinet officers, fifty or more Representatives in Congress, and sixty judges, together with fortyfive presidents and seventy-five professors of colleges, twenty-five professors in Theological Seminaries, and as many principals of female seminaries; to say nothing of the headships of countless academies-surely, this is a production of cultured men which may be safely put into competition with that of any other community in kind or value, or with any scale of material interests actual or pos

sible in like circumstances. Proud, therefore, as we may be to be reckoned in the front rank of the world's competitors as producers of the world's finest wool, and rejoicing as we do in the heritage of a soil and climate unsurpassed for the multiplied and varied comforts of life, our highest exultation is in the educated men who have carried the name and fame of Washington County as a chief home of culture into the foremost rivalry of our country, and made it known across the seas."

In 1881, James G. Blaine, writing to the people of his native county, on the occasion of their Centennial Celebration, made some interesting statements bearing on this same topic, and for this and other considerations the letter is here given entire :

JOHN D. MCKENNAN;

WASHINGTON D. C., Sept. 5, 1881.

Dear Sir-I had anticipated great pleasure in being present at the Centennial Celebration of the erection of Washington County, but the National sorrow which shadows every household detains me here.

I shall perhaps never again have the opportunity of seeing so many of the friends of my youth, and so many of my blood and kindred, and you may well conceive my disappointment is great.

The strong attachment which I feel for the county, the pride which I cherish in its traditions, and the high estimate which I have always placed on the character of its people, increase with years and reflection. The pioneers were strong-hearted, God-fearing, resolute men, wholly, or almost wholly, of Scotch or Scotch-Irish descent. They were men, who, according to an inherited maxim, never turned their backs on a friend or on an enemy.

For twenty years, dating from the middle period of the Revolution, the settlers were composed very largely of men who had themselves served in the Continental Army, many of them as officers, and they imparted an intense patriotism to the public sentiment.

It may be among the illusions of memory, but I think I have nowhere else seen the Fourth of July, and Washing