During the first night at the City Hall, about fifteen thousand persons passed the coffin, and the next day ninety thousand; rich and poor, black and white; men, women, and little children. A man on crutches hobbled past the casket, bowed with grief. "Move on," said one of the guards of honor. "Yes," replied the old man, "as well as I can I will. I left this leg in the Wilderness." An aged woman wept as she said, "Oh! general, I gave you my husband, my sons, and my son's beautiful boys."
On August 8, General Grant was laid in his tomb at Riverside Park, on the Hudson River, a million people joining in the sad funeral ceremonies. The catafalque, with its black horses led by colored grooms, moved up the street, followed by a procession four miles long. When the tomb was reached, the casket, placed in a cedar covering, leaden lined, was again enclosed in a great steel casket, round like an immense boiler, weighing thirty-eight hundred pounds. The only touching memento left upon the coffin was a wreath of oak-leaves wrought together by his grandchild Julia, on his dying day, with the words, "To Grandpa." Guns were fired, and cannon reverberated through the valley, as the pall-bearers, Confederate and Union generals, turned their footsteps away from the resting-place of their great leader. It was fitting that North and South should unite in his burial. Here, too, will sometime be laid his wife, for before his death he exacted a promise from his oldest son: "Wherever I am buried, promise me that your mother shall be buried by my side." Already she has received over three hundred thousand dollars in royalty on the memoirs which he wrote in those last months of agony. Beautifully wrote Richard Watson Gilder:—
"All's over now; here let our captain rest,—
The conflict ended, past men's praise and blame;
Here let him rest, alone with his great fame,—
Here in the city's heart he loved the best,
And where our sons his tomb may see
To make them brave as he:—
"As brave as he,—he on whose iron arm
Our Greatest leaned, our gentlest and most wise,—
Leaned when all other help seemed mocking lies,
While this one soldier checked the tide of harm,
And they together saved the State,
And made it free and great."
JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Not far from where I write is a tall gray stone monument, in the form of a circular tower, lined with various polished marbles, and exquisite stained-glass windows. It stands on a hill-top in the centre of three acres of green lawn, looking out upon blue Lake Erie and the busy city of Cleveland, Ohio.