“Major, I think I am as good a lawyer as you are, and I know that you are a better Congressman than I am. This district needs you in Washington and it can get along without me. If I can’t get on the bench I can make a living practicing law. You must take this nomination. My friends will be for you.”
That action by Judge Taylor, so much do great events hang upon seeming trivialities, sent Mr. McKinley back to Washington to continue his career in the public service, and mayhap it made him President of the United States. Judge Taylor may have been thinking of this to-day when the funeral cortege passed through the streets of Canton. More likely he was thinking of the qualities of the man for whom he had sacrificed his own ambitions. He wept bitterly, and, turning to his friends, said: “We have lost the best man I ever knew.”
Through Tenth street and then to Cherry and Tuscarawas the solemn pageant moved between solid masses of people, banked from curb to store front, crowding the house tops and filling every window. Turning into Market street, the main thoroughfare of the city, the procession moved under great curtains of mourning, strung from building to building across the street every hundred feet.
The line moved to the music of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” played as a funeral march. Except for the gentle notes of the old hymn it moved through absolute silence. Every hat was off. Every head was reverently bent. In the intervals of the music one could hear the soft footfalls of the moving soldiers, so completely did silence envelop the scene.
The funeral march finally led through the public square, where Mr. McKinley had addressed his fellow citizens times almost without number on those issues and principles which made him President. Other times without number the people had gathered by thousands in that same square in his honor. To-day the old courthouse clock looked down upon the same spot and upon the same people as in other days, its hand stopped at fifteen minutes after two, the hour at which the President died, a silent reminder of God’s way.
As the head of the procession reached the great square the military ranks swung about, forming solid fronts facing the approaching hearse. As it was driven to the curb the bearers stepped from the places alongside and again took up their burden. Before the eyes of the vast concourse filling the square the casket was tenderly raised and borne up the wide stone steps of the courthouse. The strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” were still sounding as the flag-draped coffin was taken to the main corridor of the building.
The interior of the corridor was a mass of black. There, as elsewhere, the people of Canton seemed to find much relief for their feelings by exhausting the possibilities of outward expressions of sorrow. From front to rear of the building inside there was not visible one square inch of bare wall. The vault of blackness typified the dark void in Canton’s heart. Opposite the head of the casket upon a raised platform stood three chairs clothed in black, symbolizing the vacant places of the three martyred Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.
The President’s casket was guarded, as always since he died, by picked men of the army and navy. An additional guard of honor was supplied in this instance by Canton Commandery Knights Templar, to which President McKinley belonged.
When word was given that all was ready for the last public farewell, President Roosevelt, followed by his Cabinet, stepped into the hall. He glanced down as he reached the casket, halted for a moment, and went on with set face. The members of the Cabinet followed him one by one.
The officers of the army and navy, headed by General Miles, General Otis and General Brooke, came next. Objection was made by some of the army officials to the bright light shed by the electric globes full in the face of the President, and a desire was expressed that it should be dimmed. The chandelier was too high to reach, and a delay of fully ten minutes ensued while a hunt was made for a chair. The light at the base of the chandelier was then extinguished and other electric light globes on the chandelier turned off. The result was a decided advantage. The light, while being ample, was much softer and more in keeping with the occasion.