The speech was over, its effect was like oil upon troubled waters. When the balloting began a single delegate only voted for Garfield. The fight was between Grant, Blaine, Sherman and Edmunds; Windom and others were waiting the possibility of a compromise. Garfield managed Sherman's forces. He meant to keep his favorite in the field, in vain trying to win over Blaine's followers. On the thirty-fourth ballot the Wisconsin delegation determined to make a break, and hence put forth an effort in an entirely new direction, casting their entire seventeen votes for Garfield. The General arose and declined to receive the vote, but the chairman ruled otherwise, and on the next ballot the Indiana delegation swung over. On the thirty-sixth ballot he was nominated. Then followed his canvass and election.
Time flew, and he was about to join his old friends at Willams' College, when an assassin stealthily crept up and shot him from behind, as dastardly assassins and cowardly knaves generally do. The whole country was thrown into a feverish heat of excitement between this cowardly act and the president's death, which occurred two months later. Thus, after a struggle for recognition, which had won the admiration of the world, he was snatched from the pleasure of enjoying the fruits of his toil, and from the people who needed his service. Like Lincoln, he had come from the people, he belonged to the people, and by his own right hand had won the first place among fifty millions of people. Like Lincoln, he was stricken down when his country expected the most of him, stricken in the very prime of life. Like Lincoln, when that enjoyment for which he had labored was about to crown his efforts; and like Lincoln, it could not be said of him he lived in vain.
Chester Allan Arthur's career, like that of thousands of other Americans, illustrates the truth that wealth, high social position and all the advantages with which fortune and affection can surround the young are not essential to their success and prosperity in professional, business or public life. In fact, too often they tend to enervate both mind and body, and thus prove in reality obstacles to attaining true and worthy manhood.
Mr. Arthur, like Lincoln, Grant, Garfield and others who preceded him in the presidential office, hewed his own way upward and onward from a discouraging beginning.