“Robert Reyburn.”
“8:15 P. M.—The President’s condition has continued favorable during the day. The febrile reaction does not differ materially from that of yesterday. Pulse, 108; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 24.
“D. W. Bliss,
“J. K. Barnes,
“J. J. Woodward,
“Robert Reyburn.”
So, after a week of intense anxiety, the twilight of Saturday evening closed around the world, hiding in its folds alike the hopes and the fears of the people.
The ninth day.—It was Sunday again. The Christian public had, from the first, taken up the President’s cause with heartfelt anxiety. Scarcely a pulpit or pew in the land had failed to respond in yearning and prayer for his recovery. This anxiety had been confined to no sect or creed or party. From Romanist to Free-Churchman it was all one voice of sympathy and entreaty to heaven for the President’s life. In greater or less degree, millions of men found in themselves a change of feeling, and a growth of appreciation, of thorough trust and of high regard, as they looked anxiously to the bedside of the President. His calm resignation and readiness to meet death, with his cool courage and unwavering resolution to do his best to preserve a life useful and precious to millions; his patient endurance of pain, and of all the restraints deemed essential to his recovery; his tenderness of feeling and his royal strength of will, made him loved with an unspeakable love by millions of true-hearted men and women throughout the land. It was not too much to say that the week which had elapsed had lifted the National standard of true Christian manhood for all time to come. The whole nation was educated by the affliction of one. The people will, perhaps, never realize how much they learned by the bedside of the wounded President. In knowledge of merely material things the whole Nation grew wiser. It had been studying physical injuries, their nature and treatment, with such intense interest, that there were thousands of school-boys who knew more of such subjects than their fathers did when the crime was committed. This, however, was an insignificant part of the knowledge gained. Moral culture was advanced; how much, the people could but surmise. There were millions of men and women who realized, as they had never done before, the value of calm fortitude, resolute will, and strict obedience in time of trial.
The first bulletin of Sunday morning was specially encouraging. It said:
Washington, July 10, 8 A. M.