The line continued to form, to swing by, and to melt away until the sun went down. Its characteristics changed with each minute. Men who manage great business enterprises and men who make the politics of this state walked side by side with the miner, the factory hand, the farmer and the laborer. But a single dominant characteristic made them as one. Every face bore the mark of sorrow, and in most eyes were the traces of tears.
Late in the afternoon an aged man leaning upon two crutches, which he managed with difficulty, appeared at the door through which the people were making their exit. He asked the sentry to allow him to enter, and when the soldier refused, saying he had received orders to allow nobody through that door, the old man stood back the picture of woe. In a short time he again asked the young sentry in pleading tones to allow him entrance through the doorway, saying that in his feeble condition he was not able to stand in the line which at that time was extending fully a mile from the entrance.
“I fought in his regiment during the war,” he said, “and I just want to lay this flag on his coffin and then keep it as a reminder of the time I saw him last.”
“Take it in,” said the sentry, the catch of a sob in his bronzed throat; and the veteran hobbled into the hall. When he got inside he had more trouble, and was compelled to explain his errand several times. Finally the line passing the coffin was stopped long enough to allow the old man to step to its side for a glance into the coffin and to lay his tiny flag on its glass front. Then he turned back with the crowd, hugging the now sanctified flag tightly beneath his coat.
At one time a group of schoolgirls approached the casket. There were six of them and they came three abreast. One in the forward row leaned over for a look, and, gently disengaging from the bosom of her dress a scarlet geranium, laid it gently on the top of the wreaths that rested there. The others followed her example, and although the sentries had orders to permit nobody to place anything upon the coffin or to touch the floral offerings that were already there the little tributes of the girls were allowed to remain.
All through the afternoon the crowd passed the catafalque approximately at the rate of 100 every minute, making in the five hours in which the body lay in state a total of 30,000 people, practically a number equal to the actual population of Canton. When the doors were closed at 6 o’clock the line, four abreast, stretched fully one mile from the courthouse, and people were still coming from the side streets to take their places in line.
Twilight had come as the guard and escort were formed to remove the casket to the McKinley cottage. The streets were still thronged. Amid silence that played upon the heart as the shades of night were drawn closer the casket was carried from the courthouse for the last journey of William McKinley to the little cottage, where the greatest fortune that can come to any man should come to him.
The Grand Army post of the city acted as escort. Most of these old soldiers had served in the war with him in the Twenty-third Ohio. The heaviness of personal grief was in their footsteps as they marched away.
There was no ceremony at the McKinley cottage. The casket was borne within and laid in the little front parlor from which the nation had called its chosen chief five years ago.
Mrs. McKinley was in her room when the body came. Her anguish broke out afresh on this reminder that all which had taken place there was at an end and that, worst of all, he who had wrapped her life in tenderness, who had been through many years more than husband, than father, in his care for her weakness, was now cold in death.