Secretary to the President.
Little by little the people learned. Early on Thursday there were signs of pain. There were alarming developments. The physicians, carefully scanning every evidence, breathlessly watching their patient’s every moment, learned that a relapse had come. They battled against it. They called up all the known agencies for assisting nature in opposing the grim enemy that threatened.
But the President was sinking. That was the truth about it.
All through Thursday night, all through Friday that battling for life went on, the patient, brave and uncomplaining victim of a reasonless shot, was subjecting himself utterly to the control of the medical men. And they were exhausting the possibilities of medicine and of surgery. They were doing all that man could do. They were rendering such service as king’s can not command. But the baffling difficulty continued. They could not understand.
Down through the body, hidden from their eyes, ran the channel which a murderous bullet had plowed. And in every inch of its course the fatal gangrene had settled. Death was at his feast in the President’s body!
Nothing could check that devastation. Nothing could spur the heart to combat longer. Nothing could restore those pulses to normal beating.
The President was dying!
All through the early hours of Friday night it was known he could not live to another sunrise. Friends, relatives, cabinet officers, the Vice President—all were summoned; and they were hastening to the bedside in the hush of an awful sorrow.
At three o’clock Friday morning all of the physicians were gathered at the bedside of the President. It was stated that digitalis was being administered. Drs. Mynter and Mann arrived at the house at 2:40, having been sent for hurriedly.
Dr. Park reached the house at 2:50, and shortly after him came Secretaries Hitchcock and Wilson.