Chapter XXXIV—The Tragic End.
I should like to end my story here, and feel that it was complete. I should like with my countrymen to be still looking forward with interest to the successful results of an administration, guided by the experienced statesman whose career we have followed step by step from its humble beginnings. But it can not be.
On the second of July, in the present year, a startling rumor was borne on the wings of the lightning to the remotest parts of the land:
"President Garfield has been assassinated!"
The excitement was only paralleled by that which prevailed in 1865, when Abraham Lincoln was treacherously killed by an assassin. But in this later case the astonishment was greater, and all men asked, "What can it mean?"
We were in a state of profound peace. No wars nor rumors of war disturbed the humble mind, and the blow was utterly unexpected and inexplicable.
The explanation came soon enough. It was the work of a wretched political adventurer, who, inflated by an overweening estimate of his own abilities and importance, had made a preposterous claim to two high political offices—the post of Minister to Austria, and Consul to Paris—and receiving no encouragement in either direction, had deliberately made up his mind to "remove" the President, as he termed it, in the foolish hope that his chances of gaining office would be better under another administration.
My youngest readers will remember the sad excitement of that eventful day. They will remember, also, how the public hopes strengthened or weakened with the varying bulletins of each day during the protracted sickness of the nation's head. They will not need to be reminded how intense was the anxiety everywhere manifested, without regard to party or section, for the recovery of the suffering ruler. And they will surely remember the imposing demonstrations of sorrow when the end was announced. Some of the warmest expressions of grief came from the South, who in this time of national calamity were at one with their brothers of the North. And when, on the 26th of September, the last funeral rites were celebrated, and the body of the dead President was consigned to its last resting-place in the beautiful Lake View Cemetery, in sight of the pleasant lake on which his eyes rested as a boy, never before had there been such imposing demonstrations of grief in our cities and towns.
These were not confined to public buildings, and to the houses and warehouses of the rich, but the poorest families displayed their bit of crape. Outside of a miserable shanty in Brooklyn was displayed a cheap print of the President, framed in black, with these words written below, "We mourn our loss." Even as I write, the insignia of grief are still to be seen in the tenement-house districts on the East Side of New York, and there seems a reluctance to remove them.