An immense laurel wreath, decorated with yellow, blue, and red ribbons, came from the Colombian Legation. There was also an immense wreath of orchids inscribed from the Municipality of Havana, Cuba.
And there, sleeping the dreamless sleep of death, beneath a wilderness of blossoms from the loving hands of his countrymen, William McKinley passed his last night in the White House.
CROWDS VIEWING THE REMAINS AT THE COURT HOUSE, CANTON.
TAKING THE CASKET INTO THE CHURCH AT CANTON.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
FUNERAL SERVICES AND PROCESSION AT WASHINGTON.
At 9 o’clock Tuesday morning, September 17, 1901, the funeral cortege of William McKinley, twenty-fifth President of the United States, third incumbent of the office to fall by an assassin’s hand, started from the White House toward the capitol. President Roosevelt, accompanied by his wife and sister, arrived half an hour earlier at the Executive Mansion, and were given seats in the big Red Room. Almost immediately after came former President Cleveland, with Daniel Lamont. Others, notable in the official and social life of the nation, quickly assembled, and the rooms and corridors were filled with a silent, sorrowful throng. Just before 9 o’clock Senator Hanna came into the room. He is visibly aged by the events of the past fortnight. His face seems drawn and pallid, his form is less erect, and all that vigorous, quickly deciding manner seems gone.
Precisely at the hour appointed the big men from the ranks of the Army and the Navy lifted the black casket of him who had been named “Our Well Beloved,” and carried for the last time through the doors and down to the waiting hearse. There was on the part of the thousands, both those of the party and the throngs outside, an instant recognition of the contrast between this departure from the White House, and William McKinley’s other passings through its doors.
A long line of carriages waited in the streets, and scores of others were massed in the ample grounds at the east front of the mansion. The muffled drums beat the long roll, the military band played “Nearer, My God, to Thee;” and then, as the solemn march began, the mournful strains of the “Dead March from Saul” were borne by the morning breezes over the assembled thousands.