Herbert P. Bissell came to her side as she wavered, and Dr. Wasdin hurried from the President’s chamber and administered a restorative.
Little by little Mrs. McKinley gained new strength, and in half an hour was in full control of herself. Several ladies sat beside her, and to one of these she turned and whispered:
“I will be strong for his sake.”
An invalid herself, racked for twenty years with pain, almost helpless at times, since the years in which her children passed from her, the wife and sweetheart of the dying President conquered herself.
And so the heavy hours hurried away. Midnight had come, and gone. The dawn was lingering far in the east, and not even the edge of the world glowed with the promise of day. It had rained on Friday, and a storm had raged which will long be remembered by those who were called abroad in the troubled city. As at the close of Napoleon’s life the elements warred tumultuously, so on the last day of this gentler ruler, the winds and the clouds filled the earth with tears and the sounds of weeping.
They did not know, but his physicians were helpless from the start. The demon who had struck so surely, might well make mockery of them. Six days of pain, six days of agony, six days of hovering at the slippery brink of death—and on the seventh he was at rest.
The great heart of the President was still forever. The man who had confessed his God in childhood, bade farewell to earth with the words: “Thy will be done!” The man who had helped his parents and his brothers and his sisters, who had periled his life freely in the defense of his country, who had made an honorable name and given the blessing of a husband’s love to one good woman, the man who had never harmed a human being purposely, who had lived at peace with God and man almost for three-score years, had drifted across the bar. His heart had throbbed lightly, and was still. The varying pulse had ceased, and the calm eyes that had fronted life and death and destiny without ever flinching—this Man was dead. The head of a nation, the chief executive of eighty millions of people, the statesman who had guided his country so wisely and so well, had been thrust from earth by an assassin who had no cause of complaint, who had no wrongs to avenge, no advantage to secure, no benefit to hope.
And into the silent room where all need for silence had passed, where footfalls need not be guided lightly, where bated breath were no more known, the night wind came through wide-flung windows, and touched the lips and brow and nerveless hands. And the sound of unchecked weeping waited for the dawn.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STORY OF THE ASSASSIN.
Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, was born of Polish parents, who resided in Cleveland at the time he committed the terrible crime. Twenty-six years of age, born in Detroit, of medium height, smooth-shaver, brown hair, and dressed like a workingman completes all the description necessary.