CHAPTER XXXI.
LYING IN STATE IN BUFFALO.
The funeral services of William McKinley, the man, took place in the Milburn house in Buffalo, Sunday morning, September 15. The funeral of William McKinley, the President, commenced the next afternoon in the official residence of the city where he died.
At the city hall in Buffalo everything was as he, who never denied the people’s desire to meet him face to face, and who paid with his life for the self-sacrifice, would have had it. From noon into another day, the reverent thousands upon thousands flowed past his bier, taking a last look on the face they so loved for what it meant to them and their country.
The funeral cortege left the house of President Milburn of the exposition at 11:45 o’clock. Slowly and solemnly, in time to the funeral march, it moved between two huge masses of men, women and children, stretching away two miles and a half to the city hall. Nearly two hours were required to traverse the distance.
Fully 50,000 people saw it pass. They were packed into windows, perched on roofs, massed on verandas, and compressed into solid masses covering the broad sidewalks and grass plots. Most of them stood bareheaded as it passed. Young and old, the strong and the age-bent and the lame faced it with hats in hand, unmindful of wind and rain.
All eyes were on the hearse. President Roosevelt, who rode first in the line, might have claimed some attention for the living if he would. Instead he shrank back in his carriage out of sight. The day belonged to him who had gone, and the new President would have it so.
The Sixty-fifth Regiment New York National Guard band led the line. Behind it were the military escort and a full battalion of soldiers made up of national guardsmen, United States infantry, United States artillery and United States marines. Then came the carriage of President Roosevelt and members of the Cabinet, preceding the hearse. Behind came the line of carriages of friends and associates of the dead President.
The waiting cadences of Chopin’s funeral march rose and fell. In the tear-starting productions of that music-famed Pole, the overflowing heart of a nation, mourning the foul work of another Pole, found bitterest expression. The liquid tones of bells attuned came up from the southward to mellow Chopin’s funeral cry with a note of hope.
While the military band poured out music the chimes in the belfry of old St. Paul’s Cathedral reverently rendered “Abide With Me,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and then “America.”
All night decorators had been at work preparing the city hall. Funeral bunting was draped inside and outside. During the storm of the early morning the exterior decorations were torn down, and some of the bunting became entangled in the machinery of the great clock on the tower. It stopped with the hands pointed to a quarter past two, the hour at which the President had breathed his last on the preceding night.