A NATIONAL BENEFACTOR 255 
and to the administration, which counts you among its chief 
friends. . .. 
Hastily and truly, 
James G. Blaine. 
President Garfield, as a loyal son of Williams College, 
planned to attend that college’s commencement on July 6. 
His wife and several members of the cabinet, including Blaine, 
were to accompany him. Field courteously invited the Presi- 
dential party to break the journey at Ardsley and to spend a 
day or two at his place on the way from Washington to Wil- 
liamstown. The invitation was accepted. 
But when President Garfield went to the Pennsylvania sta- 
tion on July 2 to begin this trip north, he was shot by an ag- 
grieved office-seeker and after a few weeks died. He had been 
in office only since March. The nation was shocked; for the 
second time since the Civil War a well-beloved president had 
been killed by a crank. 
Field was deeply affected, and his sympathy went out es- 
pecially to the wife and five children. He wrote to a friend in 
Washington to ask, in case the President died, whether the 
family would be left adequately provided for. The answer 
was that only about twenty thousand dollars would be avail- 
able. 
On the day of the Williams commencement, July 6, he 
sent the following message by telegraph and cable to capital- 
ists whom he knew both in America and Europe: “If Presi- 
dent Garfield should die from the wounds received on 2d 
instant he would leave for his wife and five children about 
twenty thousand dollars. I shall tomorrow, ‘Thursday, morn- 
ing exert myself to the utmost to raise a sum of money to be 
presented to him at once, as I feel confident it would help 
his recovery if he knew that in the event of his death his 
family would be provided for. I shall cheerfully subscribe 
five thousand dollars towards the sum to be raised. If you or 
