The new President had been but a few months in office, when Guiteau followed him into the railway station at Washington, and, as he entered the waiting-room, shot him in the back. The President fell wounded, but not unconscious. In great pain, he still remembered his loved ones, and moaned, "My poor wife and children." Then he dictated a message to his wife.
A struggle with death ensued, on which the whole world looked with awe.
For weeks the President hovered between life and death, showing ever the same sublime spirit of cheerful patience and Christian resignation which had adorned his life. At length the end came, and on the 19th of September 1881 he fell asleep. His body was removed to Washington, where he was laid in state. On the bier a wreath of white roses rested, bearing the simple inscription—"From Queen Victoria to the memory of the late President Garfield, an expression of her sorrow, and her sympathy with Mrs. Garfield and the American nation."
Through that room passed a hundred and thirty thousand persons of all ranks, to take one last look at the man whose life had been so great, and whose dying had been so glorious. Then in the cemetery of his native Cleveland, James A. Garfield was laid to rest.
The spontaneous affection of his countrymen amply provided for his beloved family; and his martyrdom, it was said, did more than any other event could have done to draw the North and South together. His death was mourned, and the manner of it hated by every section and party alike, and the whole nation, united now in sorrow, bowed in loving tenderness over the grave of one of its greatest children.
CHAPTER XX.
LOOKING BACK.
One of the pleasantest things in the story of Garfield is the devotion of friends and companions, which followed and helped him all his life. To an orphan lad, the son of a poor widow in the backwoods of the State of Ohio, there seemed little chance of greatness; and yet out of that poor cabin in the woods, in which sat the weeping mother and her four fatherless children, came one who was destined to stand among princes.
It was the self-denial of his mother, elder brother, and sister which made it possible for James Garfield to rise. When the father died suddenly, leaving his family on the comparatively new clearing, Thomas, the eldest son, became the manager of the farm. "I can plough and plant, mother. I can sow the wheat too, and cut the wood, milk the cows, and do heaps of things for you."