There was such a shining goodness and honesty about President McKinley that all who came near him loved and respected him. Now he went to his last resting-place mourned not only by his own people but by Great Britain and nearly every country in Europe besides. Even his murderer had no special hatred of McKinley. He was an anarchist who believed it was a good deed to kill any ruler.
So in the midst of his usefulness a good man was ruthlessly slain.
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Chapter 97 - Roosevelt - Taft
Upon McKinley's death Theodore Roosevelt, The Vice-President, became President. He was the youngest of all the Presidents, being only forty-two when he came into office. Mr. Roosevelt was in the mountains with his wife and children when the news that the President was dying was brought to him. At nine o'clock at night he started off on a long drive of thirty-five miles to the railway station. The road was narrow, and steep, and full of mudholes, and the drive through the darkness was one of danger.
A little after five in the morning the station was reached. Here a special train was waiting which carried the Vice-President to Buffalo as fast as might be. But he was too late to see his President in life. For while he was still on his wild drive through the night, President McKinley had passed peacefully to his last rest.
Mr. Roosevelt was the youngest of all presidents, and he brought to the White House a youthful energy and "hustle" such as no President had before. He had strong opinions to which he never hesitated to give voice, and perhaps since Lincoln no President had been so much a dictator.
Perhaps the most interesting thing in Roosevelt's presidency was the beginning of the Panama Canal.
You remember that when Columbus set forth upon the Sea of Darkness his idea was to reach the east by sailing west. And to this day of his death he imagined that he had reached India by sailing westward. But soon men found out the mistake, and then began the search for the North-West Passages by which they might sail past the great Continent, and so reach India.
The North-West Passage, however, proved a delusion. The men turned their attention to the narrow isthmus by which the two vast continents of North and South America are joined. And soon the idea of cutting a canal through this narrow barrier began to be talked of. But time went on and the Spaniards who held sway over the isthmus did no more than talk. Then an adventurous Scotsman was seized with the idea of founding a colony at Darien. He meant to build a great harbour where all the ships of the world would come. Merchandise was to be carried across the isthmus by camels, and soon his colony would be the key of all the commerce of the world.