Friends hastened to her side and did the little which friends can do at such a time. All others were excluded. Guards were quickly thrown about the house. Darkness fell, and for the last time Mrs. McKinley was left alone with her dead.
The following day, city and state followed the mortal remains of their great son to the tomb. Other cities by their chiefs, other states by their governors, offered sympathy to their sister. All of the mournful pomp and circumstance which the devoted regard of his friends and people could throw around the occasion followed to the grave, and the life of William McKinley was history.
The funeral services began at 1:30 p. m. at the First Methodist Episcopal Church, of which the martyred President was a communicant and trustee. They were brief, by the expressed wish of the family.
Rev. O. R. Milligan, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, in which President and Mrs. McKinley were married thirty years ago, made the opening prayer. Dr. John Hall of the Trinity Lutheran Church made the first scriptural reading and Dr. E. P. Herbruck of the Trinity Reformed Church the second. Dr. C. E. Manchester, pastor of the late President’s church, delivered the only address. A quartet sang “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” and another quartet rendered Cardinal Newman’s hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light.”
An imposing procession, consisting of many of the G. A. R. posts in the state, the National Guard of Ohio, details of regulars from all branches of the service, fraternal, social and civic organizations and representatives of commercial bodies from all over the country, the governors of several states with their staffs, the House and Senate of the United States and the cabinet and President of the United States followed the remains to Westlawn Cemetery.
Strange as it may seem, the only house in all that sorrow-stricken city without a touch of mourning drapery was the old McKinley cottage. The blinds were drawn, but there was no outward token of the blow that had robbed it of its most precious possession. The flowers bloomed on the lawn as they did two weeks ago. There was not even a bow of crape upon the door when the stricken widow was carried through it into the darkened home by Abner McKinley and Dr. Rixey. Only the hitching post at the curb in front of the residence had been swathed in black by the citizens in order that it might conform to the general scheme of mourning decoration that had been adopted.
President Roosevelt, at the home of Mrs. William Harter, kept himself from all visitors except intimate personal friends all day. He felt keenly the position into which he had been thrust by fate in the form of an assassin’s bullet. He was much pained by the unseemly cheering which greeted the funeral train at Washington.
The President was closely guarded at night. He did not like it, but he was forced to submit. Detachments of state militia were posted at the Harter home, and sentries paced under the windows on all sides of the house. They also kept guard at the McKinley cottage, where the dead President lay.
In that cottage, as the hour of midnight approached, one of the most dramatic scenes of the whole sad event transpired. Mrs. McKinley had asked to be taken for a moment to the room where her dead husband lay. She wished, for the moment, that every one, even the guards, be removed. She was for the time entirely calm, and she longed for just one precious season of silent communion at the side of him who had been her life, her love, for more than thirty years.
So they led her to the room where lights subdued revealed but dimly the details of those decorations about the bier. They watched her, for the frail body had suffered so keenly, the hold on life seemed so light, that they dare not leave her utterly. But in the room she was alone. They had placed a chair near the casket, and there she sat, looking from dry, puzzled eyes at the square, black bulk which held the form of her girlhood’s lover. The thin, white hands were clasped in her lap, the face—pain-refined from twenty years of trial—was bent slightly forward, and she seemed questioning that mighty fact.