Abner McKinley and his family occupied the next two carriages, and Mrs. Baer, formerly Miss Mabel McKinley, and her husband, were assigned a carriage to themselves. Mrs. Baer was attired in deep mourning, and it was with difficulty, even with the aid of her crutches, that she could sustain herself sufficiently to traverse the short distance from the train to her carriage.
While this scene was in the focus the members of the Cabinet and guard of honor, composed of army and navy officers, were escorting President Roosevelt from his car to his position in the carriage just behind the hearse which was to convey the body of his predecessor to the executive mansion. Close beside the President walked big George Foster, the secret service agent, who had accompanied President McKinley on nearly all of his trips.
General John R. Brooke walked beside the President on the left, and immediately behind came Secretaries Gage and Hay, walking arm in arm. Five special detectives kept guard over this quartet—Sergeants Clark and Foy of New York, Detective Carroll of Newark, N. J., and Detectives Helan and McNamee of Washington.
These detectives had instructions not to let the President out of their sight until he was safely ensconced in his house, the residence of his brother-in-law, Paymaster W. S. Cowles of the United States Navy, in the fashionable part of Washington. As soon as the President entered his carriage with General Brooke the detectives closed around it and permitted no one to come within twenty feet of its occupant.
Prior to the President entering his carriage there was a delay for a few minutes at the entrance to the baggage-room to permit the remains of President McKinley to be borne through the crowd and placed in the hearse awaiting them. This sable equipage was drawn by six black horses, each animal covered with a heavy black netting, and each horse led by a negro groom in regulation funeral dress.
There was a shuffling of feet as the crowd of distinguished men in attendance upon the President followed his footsteps, which led towards waiting carriages and, surrounded by clattering cavalry and fully equipped infantry, President Roosevelt and the escort left the railroad station and started up Pennsylvania avenue through the lanes of people, who occupied every available inch of room from the curbstone to the building line of the houses against which they pressed.
It was a weird but solemn spectacle that greeted the vision of President Roosevelt and his escort as they rode through the silent streets of the capital to make preparation for the funeral services to be held in the Capitol Building next day. Men, women, and children peered into the darkness in a vain endeavor to ascertain who were the occupants of the carriages, but in this they were disappointed, for darkness threw a veil over the scene from one end of the route to the other.
All that could be seen was the gleam of sabers as the cavalry clattered up the avenue and the gleam of a musket barrel and the glitter of gold lace when an electric light or a gas jet threw some gleams of radiance upon them.
Not a word was uttered during that solemn drive, and Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States, was not even visible as he came to take the position which had been filled so ably and efficiently by William McKinley.
It was a different inauguration procession from that in which President Roosevelt participated last March, for while on that occasion there was glad acclaim and exulting shouts of gratified patriots, on this occasion there was silence, somberness, and gloom, painful in its intensity.