The record of the Congressional Library shows that he took out more books than any other member of Congress; and his reading embraced every variety of subject, history, biography, law, politics, philosophy, government, and poetry.
At one time, during an unusually busy session, a friend found him behind a big barricade of books.
"I find I'm overworked," he said, "and need recreation. Now my theory is that the best way to rest the mind is not to let it lie idle, but to put it at something quite outside the ordinary line of employment. So, I am resting by learning all the Congressional Library can show about Horace, and the various editions and translations of his poems."
Mrs. Garfield showed the same love for the classics as her husband. A year or two ago, he said,--
"I taught my wife Latin at Hiram, and she was as good a pupil as I had. She is now teaching the same Latin to my two big boys."
"Mrs. Garfield has the 'philosophic mind' that Wordsworth sings of, and she has a self-poise, a strength of unswerving absolute rectitude. Much of the time that other women give to distributing visiting cards, Mrs. Garfield has spent in the alcoves of the Congressional Library, searching out books to carry home to study.... She has moved on in the tranquil tenor of her unobtrusive way, in a life of absolute devotion to duty; never forgetting the demands of her position or neglecting her friends, yet making it her first charge to bless her home, to teach her children, to fit her boys for college, to be the equal friend, as well as the honored wife, of her husband."
From a letter of Garfield's to President Hinsdale we follow the indefatigable reader in still another course of study:--
"Since I left you I have made a somewhat thorough study of Goethe and his epoch, and have sought to build up in my mind a picture of the state of literature and art in Europe, at the period when Goethe began to work, and the state when he died. I have grouped the various facts into order, have written them out, so as to preserve a memoir of the impression made upon my mind by the whole. The sketch covers nearly sixty pages of manuscript. I think some work of this kind outside the track of one's every day work is necessary to keep up real growth."