But in the faces of every one, from President and the Cabinet Ministers down to soldier and servant, grief of the deepest kind was written too plainly to be mistaken, and the tears stole silently down the furrows in the faces of gray-haired friends who had known intimately the man whose funeral it was.
The service at the Milburn house began a few minutes after 11 o’clock and it was over in about fifteen minutes.
The entire military and naval force formed in company front near the house and there awaited the time for the services to begin.
Meantime the members of the Cabinet, officials high in the government service, and near friends of the martyred President began to fill the walks leading up to the entrance of the Milburn residence. They came separately and in groups, some walking, while those in carriages were admitted within the roped enclosure up to the curb.
Two and two, a long line of men of dignified bearing marched up to see the house—the foreign commissioners sent to the exposition, and after them the State commissioners. With the foreigners was a colonel of the Mexican army in his full uniform of black with scarlet stripes and peaked gold braided cap. The other members of the Cabinet in the city, Secretary Long, Attorney-General Knox, Postmaster General Smith, the close confidants and friends of the late chief, Senator Hanna, Judge Day, Governors Odell, Yates, and Gregory, Representatives Alexander and Ryan, Major-General Brooke, E. H. Butler, H. H. Kohlsaat, and many others were present.
It was just eight minutes before the opening of the service when a covered barouche drove up to the house, bringing President Roosevelt and Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox, at whose home he is a guest. The President looked grave as he alighted and turned to assist Mrs. Wilcox from the carriage. His face did not relax into a smile to the salutation of those nearest the carriage, but he acknowledged the greetings silently and with an inclination of the head. Word passed up the well filled walk that the President had arrived, and those waiting to gain entrance fell back, making a narrow lane, through which Mr. Roosevelt passed along to the house.
Outside the house there was a half hour of silence and waiting. Within the house of death was woe unspeakable.
In the drawing-room, to the right of the hall, as President Roosevelt entered, the dead chieftain was stretched upon his bier. His head was to the rising sun. On his face was written the story of the Christian forbearance with which he had met his martyrdom. Only the thinness of his face bore mute testimony to the patient suffering he had endured.
The dead President was dressed as he always was in life. The black frock coat was buttoned across the breast where the first bullet of the assassin had struck. The black string tie below the standing collar showed the little triangle of white shirt front. The right hand lay at his side. The left was across his body. He looked as millions of his countrymen have seen him.
The body lay in a black casket on a black bearskin rug. Over the lower limbs was hung the starry banner he had loved so well. The flowers were few, as befitted the simple nature of the man. A spray of white chrysanthemums, a flaming bunch of blood red American Beauty roses, and a magnificent bunch of violets were on the casket. That was all. Behind the head, against a pier mirror, between the two curtained windows, rested two superb wreaths of white asters and roses. These were the only flowers in the room.