Hiram furnished a location, the Board of Trustees a building and the first teacher, the surrounding country students, but the spiritual Hiram made itself.

Everything was new.

Society, traditions, the genius of the school, had to be evolved from the forces of the teachers and pupils, limited by the general and local environment.

Let no one be surprised when I say that such a school as this was the best of all places for young Garfield.

There was freedom, opportunity, a large society of rapidly and eagerly opening young minds, instructors who were learned enough to instruct him, and abundant scope for ability and force of character, of which he had a superabundance.
"Few of the students who came to Hiram in that day had more than a district-school education, though some had attended the high schools and academies scattered over the country; so that Garfield, though he had made but slight progress in the classics and the higher mathematics previous to his arrival, ranked well up with the first scholars.