[8] Horatio Alger later used this labor to good effect when he wrote Garfield's campaign biography in 1880.[9]
After six weeks, illness forced Garfield to return home, and during his recuperation, his mother and a local school official secured his promise to forego canal work for a year of school. In 1848, he began at Geauga Seminary, in nearby Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio.[10] Garfield later said of his childhood, "I lament that I was born to poverty, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration ... a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways."[11]

Education, marriage and early career[edit]
Garfield at age 16
Garfield attended Geauga Seminary from 1848 to 1850 and learned academic subjects for which he had not previously had time. He excelled as a student and was especially interested in languages and elocution. He began to appreciate the power a speaker had over an audience, writing that the speaker's platform "creates some excitement. I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.