CHAPTER XL.

CANTON’S FAREWELL TO McKINLEY.

William McKinley had come home for the last time.

At Buffalo, at Washington and throughout the hundreds of miles between, the nation had mourned the dead President. The city and state which gave him to the nation now knelt and wept for him. For a decade and more his life had been the greatest fact in their history. To say Ohio or Canton was to say McKinley.

Two weeks before he left them in the full tide of health and strength, followed by the cheers of his neighbors, who felt themselves honored in him, their President. And now he was brought back dead. He whose life was all of kindness and love had been stricken by the hand of an assassin. That thought added a bitter drop to the cup of woe which his city and state now drinks.

Canton had done its utmost a score of times in honor of William McKinley. The demonstration as he came home with the representatives of a sorrowing nation and of sympathizing peoples in his funeral train rolled them all up into one supreme testimonial.

Imagine the picture. The city robed in black. Places of business are closed and draped. Crepe from public buildings and on private houses where death has never entered. Arches of mourning span the street. Flags looped with crepe and great banners of black and white wave overhead. The business block which bears his name, the old law office where he worked, are wrapped in mourning. The multitude is silent in the streets with loops of crepe on arms and shoulders.

The courthouse, scene of his early struggles as a lawyer, has been transformed, as it were, into a huge funeral crypt, swathed in the garb of sorrow from sill to tower peak. Across the front, shining in letters of gold against the somber background, is inscribed President McKinley’s last message to those he loved: “It is God’s way; His will, not ours, be done.”

There the stricken President’s body lay all day guarded by soldiers of the state and nation, only one step from the tomb, while his old friends and neighbors, companions of his early struggles and his later triumphs, streamed by for one last look at his face.

For one night he rested under the cottage roof whence he went to the highest seat in the nation.

The scenes along the last stage of President McKinley’s progress toward the grave duplicated those which accompanied his funeral train from Buffalo to Washington. Most of the journey from Washington to this city was by night. It made no difference to the people who sought the last chance to show their regard for the lamented President.

The funeral train slipped out of Washington at 8:20 o’clock, leaving an uncovered multitude behind. At Baltimore thousands were in waiting. The train stopped only long enough to change engines and then started northward.

All along the way railroad operations were suspended. Not a bell rang, not a whistle blew, not a wheel turned. It was as if the whole world knelt in the presence of the nation’s dead.

Throughout the night the train passed between a constant line of camp fires through the valleys and among the hills of Pennsylvania. As the black draped engine approached the gathered people rose, and by the flickering of their camp fires they could be seen and heard standing with bared heads and singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Gangs of miners came up from the shaft on dozens of hillsides, their lamps gleaming through the night as they stood caps in hand to show their regard for a statesman who was ever their friend.

Solitary track walkers turned aside and uncovered. That was the supreme evidence of reverential honor. When one man does that in the isolation and darkness of the night he does it because it expresses what is in his heart.

At Harrisburg 20,000 people remained in the street around the railroad station until long after midnight. Then the train plunged into the Juniata valley and commenced its long climb over the mountains. And still camp fires glowed beside the track and still voices were raised throughout the night in that old hymn which has become a nation’s funeral chant.

Half the population of Johnstown, the first of the great steel manufacturing centers through which the train passed, was at the track and a company of local militia stood drawn up at attention. Four women with uplifted hands knelt on the station platform. From the smoke-covered city came the sound of the church bells tolling out the universal sorrow as the train slowed down that the people might better see the impressive spectacle within the observation car—the casket with its burden of flowers, the two grim, armed sentries on guard, “one at the head and the other at the foot.”

Those in the Canton reception committee rode as if to the funeral of one their own kin. They had known William McKinley and worked with him in business and official and social life for years. They loved him as a brother, and as a brother they mourned his death.

Some of them gave way utterly to their emotions and wept like children. A notable example was Judge Isaac H. Taylor. He had served in Congress with Mr. McKinley when they represented adjoining districts. Away back in the ’80s, when the Congressional map of Ohio was remade, the counties in which they lived were thrown into the same district. Both had hosts of friends. Both wanted to go back to Congress. The district was nearly evenly divided between them. If the contest for the nomination in the new district had gone to the point such political rivalries usually reach, both might have had to give way to a new man.

In that contingency Judge Taylor had the eye of the prophet and a breast full of admiration for his rival. He went to him and said:

“Major, I think I am as good a lawyer as you are, and I know that you are a better Congressman than I am. This district needs you in Washington and it can get along without me. If I can’t get on the bench I can make a living practicing law. You must take this nomination. My friends will be for you.”

That action by Judge Taylor, so much do great events hang upon seeming trivialities, sent Mr. McKinley back to Washington to continue his career in the public service, and mayhap it made him President of the United States. Judge Taylor may have been thinking of this to-day when the funeral cortege passed through the streets of Canton. More likely he was thinking of the qualities of the man for whom he had sacrificed his own ambitions. He wept bitterly, and, turning to his friends, said: “We have lost the best man I ever knew.”

Through Tenth street and then to Cherry and Tuscarawas the solemn pageant moved between solid masses of people, banked from curb to store front, crowding the house tops and filling every window. Turning into Market street, the main thoroughfare of the city, the procession moved under great curtains of mourning, strung from building to building across the street every hundred feet.

The line moved to the music of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” played as a funeral march. Except for the gentle notes of the old hymn it moved through absolute silence. Every hat was off. Every head was reverently bent. In the intervals of the music one could hear the soft footfalls of the moving soldiers, so completely did silence envelop the scene.

The funeral march finally led through the public square, where Mr. McKinley had addressed his fellow citizens times almost without number on those issues and principles which made him President. Other times without number the people had gathered by thousands in that same square in his honor. To-day the old courthouse clock looked down upon the same spot and upon the same people as in other days, its hand stopped at fifteen minutes after two, the hour at which the President died, a silent reminder of God’s way.

As the head of the procession reached the great square the military ranks swung about, forming solid fronts facing the approaching hearse. As it was driven to the curb the bearers stepped from the places alongside and again took up their burden. Before the eyes of the vast concourse filling the square the casket was tenderly raised and borne up the wide stone steps of the courthouse. The strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” were still sounding as the flag-draped coffin was taken to the main corridor of the building.

The interior of the corridor was a mass of black. There, as elsewhere, the people of Canton seemed to find much relief for their feelings by exhausting the possibilities of outward expressions of sorrow. From front to rear of the building inside there was not visible one square inch of bare wall. The vault of blackness typified the dark void in Canton’s heart. Opposite the head of the casket upon a raised platform stood three chairs clothed in black, symbolizing the vacant places of the three martyred Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.

The President’s casket was guarded, as always since he died, by picked men of the army and navy. An additional guard of honor was supplied in this instance by Canton Commandery Knights Templar, to which President McKinley belonged.

When word was given that all was ready for the last public farewell, President Roosevelt, followed by his Cabinet, stepped into the hall. He glanced down as he reached the casket, halted for a moment, and went on with set face. The members of the Cabinet followed him one by one.

The officers of the army and navy, headed by General Miles, General Otis and General Brooke, came next. Objection was made by some of the army officials to the bright light shed by the electric globes full in the face of the President, and a desire was expressed that it should be dimmed. The chandelier was too high to reach, and a delay of fully ten minutes ensued while a hunt was made for a chair. The light at the base of the chandelier was then extinguished and other electric light globes on the chandelier turned off. The result was a decided advantage. The light, while being ample, was much softer and more in keeping with the occasion.

Four detachments of militia then marched into the hall and were drawn up in a line reaching from the entrance on the south to the bier. Another line stretched from the bier to the place where the hall diverged, and down each side hall were other lines. Strict orders were given to see that there was no delay in the crowd as it passed out of the building.

When everything was ready for the public to enter, Joseph Saxton, uncle of Mrs. McKinley, an aged man bowed deeply with the weight of years, entered from the east hall and passed up to the casket. He stood for fully two minutes gazing into the face of his distinguished kinsman. He then passed slowly down the hall, his head bowed low, his lips twitching convulsively.

A few final details were arranged and then the door was opened to the public. Two little girls were the first to approach the casket. Directly behind them was a tall powerful man with a red mustache. As he gazed into the casket he caught his breath in a quick sharp sob that was audible in every part of the hallway. He then gave way entirely, and, weeping bitterly, passed out.

For five hours the old friends and neighbors of the stricken chieftain marched by in two constant streams, fed by a river of men and women and children, which stretched away through the city for nearly a mile. These were no mere curiosity seekers, eager to see how a dead President looked. They were men and women who knew and loved him and children who planned in their youthful dreams to emulate him.

Tears came unbidden to wet the bier. Perhaps it was the great change that had come upon the countenance which moved them more than the sight of the familiar features. The signs of discoloration which appeared upon the brow and cheeks yesterday at the state ceremonial in the rotunda of the capital at Washington had deepened and the lips had become livid.

One of the first men in the line was an old farmer from the lower end of Stark County. He paused beside the casket and burst into tears. “His kindness and his counsel saved a boy of mine,” the old man murmured half in apology to the guards as he tottered out of the building.

Old soldiers who had served with the “major,” as they called him, stumped by with limping feet on wooden legs and on crutches. Poor men and poor women whom he had helped when they needed help, and without anybody being the wiser, dropped flowers on the pall. One old soldier broke through the line a second time for another look.

“I went to the war with him,” the old man said, “and I would not have come back but for him. He saw that I wasn’t forgotten in the hospital.” The apology was enough to excuse the old man’s breach of the rules in the eyes of the guard.

A little girl came along. She stopped long enough to press a kiss upon the glass above the dead face and then ran from the building with streaming eyes. One of the guards thought he saw her drop something and looked. He found it hidden away among the costly wreaths and clusters of roses and immortelles and almost priceless orchids. It was a little cluster of common, late blooming garden flowers, and to it was tied with a piece of thread a note written in a cramped childish hand:

+-----------------------------------------+ | DEAR MR. M’KINLEY: I wish | | I could send you some prettier flowers, | | but these are all I have. I am | | sorry you got shot. | | | | KATIE LEE. | +-----------------------------------------+

That guard had a spark of poetry in his soul. He picked up the modest little bunch of flowers and tenderly laid it across a cluster of orchids.

“I thought I saw the President smile,” he said when he told a comrade.

The line continued to form, to swing by, and to melt away until the sun went down. Its characteristics changed with each minute. Men who manage great business enterprises and men who make the politics of this state walked side by side with the miner, the factory hand, the farmer and the laborer. But a single dominant characteristic made them as one. Every face bore the mark of sorrow, and in most eyes were the traces of tears.

Late in the afternoon an aged man leaning upon two crutches, which he managed with difficulty, appeared at the door through which the people were making their exit. He asked the sentry to allow him to enter, and when the soldier refused, saying he had received orders to allow nobody through that door, the old man stood back the picture of woe. In a short time he again asked the young sentry in pleading tones to allow him entrance through the doorway, saying that in his feeble condition he was not able to stand in the line which at that time was extending fully a mile from the entrance.

“I fought in his regiment during the war,” he said, “and I just want to lay this flag on his coffin and then keep it as a reminder of the time I saw him last.”

“Take it in,” said the sentry, the catch of a sob in his bronzed throat; and the veteran hobbled into the hall. When he got inside he had more trouble, and was compelled to explain his errand several times. Finally the line passing the coffin was stopped long enough to allow the old man to step to its side for a glance into the coffin and to lay his tiny flag on its glass front. Then he turned back with the crowd, hugging the now sanctified flag tightly beneath his coat.

At one time a group of schoolgirls approached the casket. There were six of them and they came three abreast. One in the forward row leaned over for a look, and, gently disengaging from the bosom of her dress a scarlet geranium, laid it gently on the top of the wreaths that rested there. The others followed her example, and although the sentries had orders to permit nobody to place anything upon the coffin or to touch the floral offerings that were already there the little tributes of the girls were allowed to remain.

All through the afternoon the crowd passed the catafalque approximately at the rate of 100 every minute, making in the five hours in which the body lay in state a total of 30,000 people, practically a number equal to the actual population of Canton. When the doors were closed at 6 o’clock the line, four abreast, stretched fully one mile from the courthouse, and people were still coming from the side streets to take their places in line.

Twilight had come as the guard and escort were formed to remove the casket to the McKinley cottage. The streets were still thronged. Amid silence that played upon the heart as the shades of night were drawn closer the casket was carried from the courthouse for the last journey of William McKinley to the little cottage, where the greatest fortune that can come to any man should come to him.

The Grand Army post of the city acted as escort. Most of these old soldiers had served in the war with him in the Twenty-third Ohio. The heaviness of personal grief was in their footsteps as they marched away.

There was no ceremony at the McKinley cottage. The casket was borne within and laid in the little front parlor from which the nation had called its chosen chief five years ago.

Mrs. McKinley was in her room when the body came. Her anguish broke out afresh on this reminder that all which had taken place there was at an end and that, worst of all, he who had wrapped her life in tenderness, who had been through many years more than husband, than father, in his care for her weakness, was now cold in death.

Friends hastened to her side and did the little which friends can do at such a time. All others were excluded. Guards were quickly thrown about the house. Darkness fell, and for the last time Mrs. McKinley was left alone with her dead.

The following day, city and state followed the mortal remains of their great son to the tomb. Other cities by their chiefs, other states by their governors, offered sympathy to their sister. All of the mournful pomp and circumstance which the devoted regard of his friends and people could throw around the occasion followed to the grave, and the life of William McKinley was history.

The funeral services began at 1:30 p. m. at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, of which the martyred President was a communicant and trustee. They were brief, by the expressed wish of the family.

Rev. O. R. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, in which President and Mrs. McKinley were married thirty years ago, made the opening prayer. Dr. John Hall of the Trinity Lutheran Church made the first scriptural reading and Dr. E. P. Herbruck of the Trinity Reformed Church the second. Dr. C. E. Manchester, pastor of the late President’s church, delivered the only address. A quartet sang “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” and another quartet rendered Cardinal Newman’s hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.”

An imposing procession, consisting of many of the G. A. R. posts in the state, the National Guard of Ohio, details of regulars from all branches of the service, fraternal, social and civic organizations and representatives of commercial bodies from all over the country, the governors of several states with their staffs, the House and Senate of the United States and the cabinet and President of the United States followed the remains to Westlawn Cemetery.

Strange as it may seem, the only house in all that sorrow-stricken city without a touch of mourning drapery was the old McKinley cottage. The blinds were drawn, but there was no outward token of the blow that had robbed it of its most precious possession. The flowers bloomed on the lawn as they did two weeks ago. There was not even a bow of crape upon the door when the stricken widow was carried through it into the darkened home by Abner McKinley and Dr. Rixey. Only the hitching post at the curb in front of the residence had been swathed in black by the citizens in order that it might conform to the general scheme of mourning decoration that had been adopted.

President Roosevelt, at the home of Mrs. William Harter, kept himself from all visitors except intimate personal friends all day. He felt keenly the position into which he had been thrust by fate in the form of an assassin’s bullet. He was much pained by the unseemly cheering which greeted the funeral train at Washington.

The President was closely guarded at night. He did not like it, but he was forced to submit. Detachments of state militia were posted at the Harter home, and sentries paced under the windows on all sides of the house. They also kept guard at the McKinley cottage, where the dead President lay.

In that cottage, as the hour of midnight approached, one of the most dramatic scenes of the whole sad event transpired. Mrs. McKinley had asked to be taken for a moment to the room where her dead husband lay. She wished, for the moment, that every one, even the guards, be removed. She was for the time entirely calm, and she longed for just one precious season of silent communion at the side of him who had been her life, her love, for more than thirty years.

So they led her to the room where lights subdued revealed but dimly the details of those decorations about the bier. They watched her, for the frail body had suffered so keenly, the hold on life seemed so light, that they dare not leave her utterly. But in the room she was alone. They had placed a chair near the casket, and there she sat, looking from dry, puzzled eyes at the square, black bulk which held the form of her girlhood’s lover. The thin, white hands were clasped in her lap, the face—pain-refined from twenty years of trial—was bent slightly forward, and she seemed questioning that mighty fact.

She was entirely calm, and her attendants, keeping vigil from the darkened hall, felt the grip of her mighty, unspoken sorrow, as she sought in the night for a touch of that vanished hand, for a glimpse of a day that was dead.