“Yes, probably he wants to get home, but he enjoys this place very well. We turned him on his side this morning, so that he could look out over the ocean, and he was very much pleased. He longed to get here. Two or three days before we started, I remember a queer remark he made. I said to him, ‘Mr. President, how would you like to have us put you on the Tallapoosa and get you down to the salt water?’ ‘That would be temporary, tentative and unsettled,’ he said; ‘put me on the cars and take me to Long Branch.’”
“Does he read the papers?”
“No; but he could. Yesterday I read to him a number of dispatches we had just received. Here is one of them now.” The Colonel drew from his pocket a telegram, which he read as follows:
“Pittsfield, Mass., September 7.
“To President Garfield, Long Branch:
“The Garfield and Arthur Club, of Pittsfield, and people of the town, without regard to party lines, in Berkshire County, to whose hospitalities you were coming when so brutally assailed, and where thousands of Berkshire hearts were waiting to welcome you, all unite in congratulations on your safe arrival at the sea-shore. All hope for your speedy recovery, and to-day the shire town suspends business to meet and ask the Great Healer to be with you and make efficacious the efforts of your earthly physicians.
Officers and Members
of the Garfield and Arthur Club, and many others.”
“The President,” continued Colonel Rockwell, “was greatly pleased by the kind expressions in the telegram, and bade me telegraph his thanks.”
Dr. Hamilton, in conversation with Dr. Pancoast, spoke very encouragingly of the prospects, saying, in effect, that he had the strongest hopes of recovery. Celebrations and thanksgivings to signalize the joy of the people, were freely discussed. The apparent change for the better caused a rebound in popular sentiment, which was quite disproportioned to its cause. Alas! it had no foundation whatever.