Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/143

 BLAINE

perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful institutions.

From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot, came the late presi- dent — his father, Abram Garfield, descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballon, from the other.

It was good stock on both sides — none better, none braver, none truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, of im- perishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud of his blood; and, with as much satisfaction as if he were a British nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in Burke's "Peerage," he spoke of him- self as ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave French Protes- tants who refused to submit to tyranny even from the Grand INIonarch.

General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and during his only visit to England he busier] himself in discovering every trace of his forefathers in parish registers and on ancient army rolls. Sitting with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons one night after a long day's labor in this field of research, he said with evident elation that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional govern- ment and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were at ]\Iarston I\Ioor, at

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