During the day President McKinley was conscious when he was not sleeping. Early in the morning when he awoke he looked out of the window and saw that the sky was overcast with heavy clouds.
“It is not so bright as it was yesterday,” said he.
His eyes then caught the waving branches of the trees, glistening with rain, and their bright green evidently made an agreeable impression upon him.
“It is pleasant to see them,” said he, feebly.
Mrs. McKinley did not take her usual drive. She saw the President once before night, and then only for a moment. No words passed between them. The physicians led her to the bedside of her husband, and after she had looked at him for a moment they led her away.
While Mrs. McKinley was told that the President was not so well the physicians deemed it best not to attempt to explain to her fully the nature of the complications which had arisen or the real gravity of his condition.
As fast as steam could bring them the President’s secretaries, the members of his family and the physicians who had left convinced that the President would recover, were whirled back to Buffalo. They went at once to the house in which he was lying, and the information which they obtained there was of a nature to heighten rather than to relieve their fears.
All night the doctors worked to keep the President alive. The day broke with a gloomy sky and a pouring rain, broken by frequent bursts of gusty downpours. It seemed as though nature was sympathizing with the gloom which surrounded the ivy-clad house about which the sentries were steadily marching.
The 2 o’clock bulletin, issued at 2:30, swung the pendulum away over on the side of confidence. It stated that the President had more than held his own since morning, and that his condition justified the expectation of further improvement. It added: “He is better than at this time yesterday.”
Faces up and down the street brightened. Telegraph messenger boys, in their youthful spirits, restrained all the day by the gloom around the Milburn house, whooped as they ran and nobody reproved. The sun shone again.