“He would urge me to try to sing, and insisted I had a sweet tenor voice, but the pleasant charm of the happy occasions was never marred by my vocal efforts.
“I knew I could not sing, but I listened; the echoes of those happy hours will linger with me as long as I live. The little singing parties in our parlour after dinner were always his delight.
“I got the closest revelations of William McKinley’s character, I think, in our quiet hours of smoking and chatting, when all the rest had retired. Far past midnight we have sat many times talking over those matters which friends always discuss—and the closer I came to the man the more lovable his character appeared. Every time we met there was revealed the gentle, growing greatness of a man who knew men, respected them, and loved them. Never was it the personal interests of William McKinley that he discussed, but those of friends, or his party, and above all, of the people. His clear-cut conscientiousness was pronounced. In these heart-to-heart talks—friend to friend—in the calm serenity of the night’s quiet hours, we felt the ties of our life’s friendship growing stronger as we simply sat and puffed and looked in each other’s faces. These home smoke chats are the treasured memories of a man who loved mankind much more than he did himself, and who had consecrated his career to the people. He always was interested in business and industrial affairs, and understood them as few men did in their relation to the home comforts and happiness of the American people. It was in these quiet hours together that the splendid devotion of the man to high and noble ideals showed clearest. I think that a reminiscent glance at our smoke-chat meetings night after night, wherever we chanced to be, reveals to me most freely the great qualities in the man which the world had so profoundly honoured. I can see that kindly, quizzical look in his deep blue eyes under his bushy eyebrows, when he broke the silence after meditating:
“‘Mark, this seems to be right and fair and just. I think so, don’t you?’ His ‘don’t you?’ or, ‘did you?’ always had a tone that invited candid confidence, and this is a peculiarity that brings back to my memory some incidents of our acquaintanceship in early years and seemed to foreshadow his future.
“Looking back over the long years of association with William McKinley, nothing seems to stand out more prominently than the hearty and sunny way in which he always enjoyed the friendly hours of recreation. These pleasant episodes of a purely personal nature are emphasized more and more as I think of him, and it is these that I most cherish in the memory of the man. His greatness as a statesman was but the reflection of his greatness as a man.
“William McKinley was faultless in his friendships.”
Mrs. McKinley survived her husband several years. She died at her Canton, Ohio, home in 1907.
CHAPTER XII
FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
September 14, 1901, to March 4, 1905