“A daily bulletin!” repeated Mr. McKinley, as I refolded the epistle after the satisfactory glance.
“Yes—and we have been married nearly forty years!”
“A commendable example—” he began, when his wife caught him up:
“Which he does not need! He never fails to write to me every day when he is away; but when he was in Washington, some years ago, and I was not well enough to go with him, he telegraphed every morning to know how I was, besides writing a long letter to me in the afternoon.”
Laughingly putting the remark aside, he leaned forward to direct my attention to a row of hills on the horizon, and to talk of certain historical associations connected with that part of the State. She resumed the topic, awhile later, descanting in a low tone upon his unwearied regard for her health, his tender solicitude, his skill as a nurse, and similar themes, drawn on by my unfeigned interest in the story, until he checked her, with the same light laugh:
“Ida, my dear! you are making Mrs. Terhune lose the finest points in the landscape we brought her out to admire.”
“Permit me to remind you that there are moral beauties better worth my attention,” retorted I.
He lifted his hat, with a bright look that went from my face to dwell upon that of the fragile woman opposite him, with affectionate appreciation, and full confidence that I would comprehend the feeling that led her to praise him—a flashing smile, I despair of describing as it deserves. It transfigured his face into beauty I can never forget. In all my thoughts of the man who became the idol of his compatriots, dying, like a martyr-hero, with a plea for mercy for the insane assassin upon his lips, I recur to that incident in my brief personal acquaintanceship with him, as a revelation of what was purest and sweetest in a nature singularly strong and gentle.
In relating the little by-play to my dear friend, Mrs. Waite, the widow of the Chief-Justice, then living in Washington, I said that it was a pity to see a man in Mr. McKinley’s exalted and responsible position tied to the arm-chair of a hopeless invalid, who could contribute nothing to his usefulness in any relation of life.
“He owes more to her than the public will ever suspect,” was the reply. “We knew him from a boy, and watched his early struggles upward. His wife was his guiding star, his right hand. She was, then, a woman of unusual personal and mental gifts, more ambitious for him than he was for himself. My husband often said that she was Mr. McKinley’s inspiration. Those who have never known her except as the fragile, nerveless creature she is now, cannot imagine what she was before the deaths of her children and her terrible illness left her the wreck you see. But he does not forget what she was, and what she did for him.”