No other business occupied the road’s attention till this caravan of the dead should pass. Ahead of it ran a pilot engine, insuring against any possible accident. Behind it all business waited till it was far away.
Loving hearts devised new forms of testimony to the fallen chief, and gentle hands discharged the duties that the day imposed. Time and again the track was heaped for rods with all manner of flowers before the on-coming train. American Beauty roses were piled above the rails. Glowing asters and gleaming violets alternated with wild flowers and the vivid reds and yellows of autumn leaves. And the iron wheels that whirled the funeral party south cut through the banks of bloom and filled the air with perfume as fragrant as the nation’s love.
Schools were dismissed, and little groups of boys and girls stood in silent, puzzled wonder as the train rolled past. At every cross-road from dawn to dark were gathered farmers’ teams, with men and women, waiting to pay their silent, tearful tribute to the dead. At every town the flags were held at half-mast, and the streets were crowded with the masses of Americans sincere in their sympathy for the living, profoundly sorrowing for the dead.
There were traces of tears in every face. There were evidences of respect in every attitude. The bells of every village tolled while the flag-draped coffin went hurrying past.
Nothing more pathetic marked the whole procession than the homely badges of black and purple ribbon worn by men in the towns and little cities. There had been no time for the emblems of factory fashioning to reach them, and little rosettes composed by women’s hands dotted the bosoms of dresses and the lapels of coats.
Business was suspended. All interest in life was held in abeyance, for the nation’s dead was going by.
The one relief to this monotone of woe was furnished by lads in Pennsylvania, who took coins from their slender stores of saving, and laid them on the rails, rescuing them, flattened, when the train had passed. And they will preserve these among their treasures to the end of life.
Down the Susquehanna River the banks seemed lined with watchers, who had assembled for a view, the one tribute possible for them to pay. Upon the opposite side of the track a highway ran, and farmers’ homes, fronting it, were draped in mourning, and in their windows displayed the portraits of the President so foully slain, with flags and flowers wreathed into borders, and flashing their testimony of sorrow to those who accompanied the dead.
Shortly after leaving Buffalo Mrs. McKinley was persuaded to lie down, and she rested there undisturbed for hours, her friends watching her continually, and attentive to her every want. She was speechless, simply staring straight before her as if the meaning of this awful blow could not be comprehended. Toward noon she rose, and sat at a window, looking off at the fleeting panorama of hills and fields, and reverent friends who vainly yearned to lighten her sorrow. There were no tears until the train paused in the station at Harrisburg. The crowds had been very dense, and she became conscious that thousands peered intently into the coaches as they passed; so she moved away from the window and still sat silent. There was a moment’s wait in the station and then the iron arches of the roof rang with the swelling numbers of the song, “Nearer, My God, To Thee!” The Harrisburg Choral Society, 300 strong, had assembled at the farther wall; and the rolling tide of its melody filled the great structure. It came to the silent little woman in the second coach, so sadly, hopelessly alone; and she bowed her head and wept.
As the train pulled out the Choral Society took up the lines: “My Country, ’Tis of Thee;” and as the sorrowing guardians were hurried away ten thousand voices in the crowd outside the depot and along the streets evidently without prearrangement, joined in that, their funeral anthem: