CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR.

W

HEN Chester A. Arthur, elected vice-president by the decisive vote that made James A. Garfield President, found himself confronted by the grave responsibilities of September 19, 1881, he had occasion for doubt and hesitation, and for wonder if he should be given, wisdom and strength for that which lay in the immediate future. Other vicepresidents had been called higher because of the visitation of death's messenger at the White House, and one before him had seen his commission the issue of assassination, but to none had the personal difficulties been so embarrassing and over-powering. The identification of the vice-president with that branch of the Republican party in hostility to Garfield, his personal friendship and loyalty to Senators Conkling and Platt, the efforts he had so recently made to secure their return to the senate for the purpose of war upon the administration, the fact that the President's assassin had committed his deed of blood in the belief and boast that with the accession of Arthur to the Presidential chair his crime would be condoned and eventually rewarded, and the universal and bitter regret that this awful sacrifice had been the outcome of a petty political demand for the patronage of office-these were, indeed, reasons for fear and hesitation and a wavering failure of heart when the long tragedy ended in death, and he found himself the one man in all the land to take up the heavy load of the dead, and do the works that the wan hands of Garfield had surrendered forever.

It is to the highest honor of the American people, and one of the most potent arguments in favor of our plan of respecting and self-respecting government, that no sane man for a moment believed, even in the heat of a first thought, that Arthur had a part in the deed that made him President, or the shadow of a hint that it was to be performed. No man so far forgot himself or dishonored his National lineage by a suspicion of this character; and whatever the new President was called upon to face, this accusation and suspicion was not among them. His generous nature and manly heart, his innate sense of humanity and the brotherhood of man,

made it impossible for him to vaunt himself over an elevation that came at such cost, and there is no doubt that all his after life was tempered and subdued by the dark events through which he had passed. The mistake of his participation in the warfare upon his chief was overlooked and forgiven when the world heard the spontaneous sympathy with which he met the stricken wife and family, and the manly emotion displayed in every word and deed. He went into the Presidential chair with the sympathy and respect of all, and none awarded him a higher meed of praise for any good he did or sought to do than those who stood in heart the closest to his predecessor.

The life of Chester A. Arthur before the decision of the Chicago convention of 1880 placed him in the forefront of National events, had been eventful to a certain degree, and busy and stirring in many respects; but nothing therein, and little in his expectations or aspirations, had indicated the crowning of his career with an occupancy of the highest office in the land. His early years can be briefly described. He came of a family from which many good qualities formed his inheritance, and was reared and educated amid favorable circumstances and surroundings. He was born in the town of Fairfield, Franklin county, Vermont, on October 5, 1830, the son of Rev. William Arthur, a native of Ireland, who had come to this country when eighteen years of age, and devoted himself to the Baptist ministry-a man of scholarship and literary tastes, whose fondness for research led him to the publication of a journal called the Antiquarian. The son attended schools in the various towns in which his father was settled in a ministerial capacity, his direct preparation for college beginning at what is now the town of Greenwich, Washington county, New York, and finished at the grammar school in Schenectady. At the age of fifteen he entered Union college, and, though obliged to be absent two winters to obtain means for his college support by school teaching, he graduated in 1849 with honors. Before this he had decided to give himself to the profession of law, and after graduation he attended a law school at Ballston Spa for some months, but being unable to keep up the expense returned home to continue his studies. In 1851 he became principal of an academy at North Pownal, Vermont, where he combined the preparation of boys for college with that of himself for his chosen profession. Two years later he went to New York city and entered the law office of E. D. Culver. Speedily admitted to the bar, he became a member of the firm of Culver, Parker & Arthur, which partnership continued until 1857. He then became a member of the firm of Arthur & Gardiner, and in 1859 formed a still more important partnership in his marriage to Ellen Lewis Herndon, the daughter of a distinguished officer in the United States navy. Mrs. Arthur died in January, 1880, and her husband never again married.

From the beginning of manhood's career Mr. Arthur was interested in.