violence lording it over us all! We are one in our distress at the last calamity and national affliction, in horror at an unspeakable crime. And so suddenly has the blow been dealt that there has been no time to search for the words which one might wish to speak. Two things surely are filling our thoughts today. We are looking at the man; we are looking at the crime. As for the man, his warmest friends, his greatest admirers, could have asked for him no more brilliant apotheosis. Estimates have varied of him, his ability, his work. But millions have been praying as men seldom pray that his life might be precious in the sight of God; and far beyond our borders, and widely through foreign lands, others innumerable, our brethren in a common humanity, have been on their knees pleading for his life. This tells the story of his character, his acts, his greatness; the general consent of the wide world, from which there can be no appeal.

"Our President was a great man in the highest sense in which that adjective can be applied. I am not speaking as a publicist, nor analyzing a political career; there is room for difference of judgment there; but there are other matters upon which we are all agreed. What is it to find in the highest place among us a man devout and faithful in his Christian profession, modest, calm, capable; a pattern of the domestic virtues, an example of right living? Has not the public, the great American nation, taken in the beauty first of that good, honest, loyal life? Is it not for this that the man has been beloved and mourned throughout our families and our homes?

What makes the Christian gentleman to begin with but simplicity and sincerity of life, courteous manners, dislike of pride and ostentation, abhorrence of display and vulgar show? So have we thought first of this man, and then we have followed his life through its varied phases. We have seen the quiet student, the soldier, the legislator, the executive officer; and, looking on, our admiration has grown more and more. We have seen him chosen by a vast popular movement to be the chief magistrate of the nation; we have scanned his conduct and acts during four years, among the most critical in the nation's history, and as the result of such scrutiny in the broadest light that could be thrown upon his path, and under the severest criticism to which a public man can be subjected, we have seen him re-elected to his great office by a larger vote than ever amid the acclamation of the people and to the confusion of his adversaries.

"All this we have seen. And then we have said: 'In this system of ours we do not ask for a man who shall make and control, but for a man who shall wisely guide, oversee, direct; a man who catches the spirit of the

age, who knows the signs of the times, who interprets movements, and in his sound judgment shapes their course.' Looking at the last four years, more full of vital issues to the nation than any since the days of Abraham Lincoln, we have seen wonderful things. A nation passing on from small to great, from narrow places to broad, the horizon enlarging all the while, the nation attaining its majority, the world looking on with amazement, great questions put and answered well, great principles settled, great deeds done for freedom and clarifying of evil, and instruction in sound views of government; one great, grand, forward, upward movement, dazzling the eyes and charming the senses and kindling hope. And at the head of all this a man--not as if he were the author of these things, but certainly the wise, prudent, earnest leader; such a leader as Providence, we believe, must have raised for that particular work and inclined us to put in that position. That was the

man.

"And up to Friday, September 6, that was the scene presented by our happy and highly favored land-a land blessed and contented, at peace and secure; never before so prosperous, never yet so honored abroad, never yet so hopeful, so confident; marching on its splendid path to greater things. And always at the head that good citizen, that earnest patriot, that wise head, that warm, affectionate heart, that friendly, fearless instance of the best that our American civilization has yet brought forth to help and cheer; trusted by a great people; strong, able, healthful, with his friends about him and the light of coming years in front. That was the fate of the people, and that was their will, and according to all ideas the will of the people is the law of the land, and he who gainsays is the enemy of the sovereign people. So stood matters a week ago last Friday.

"And now what shall we say?

"The crime; what was it? That high treason against the sovereign people of these United States? Let us compare crime with crime, and we shall see in this the worst of all we have ever known, the worst, the most outrageous ever committed in this land."

After reviewing the assassination of Garfield and Lincoln, Dr. Dix continued:

"But there was worse to come. And it has come. Something else; something new among us; not new elsewhere, alas! but new in this land supposed to be a land of freemen, the refuge for the oppressed, the home of the higher and better civilization. Right in the path on which the great nation is advancing stands the most horrid spectre by which social order has yet been

confronted. A shadow has fallen on the road, blacker than any shadow of death. Be the individual who he may that happens to represent this new foe, he is of very little consequence compared with the motive which inspired his act. This spectre to-day announced as its aim and end the total destruction of modern civilization, the overthrow of all law, of all governments, of restraint of any kind on the private individual will. And the fatal blow of Friday, September 6, was dealt at the Chief Magistrate of the United States by a believer in that system and in exact accordance with its well-known principles.

"And that lends the real horror to the act and gives its double horror to the crime. It is not a crime like other crimes; it is not one with which we are familiar. And our hearts sink at the thought that we are now at length face to face with this infernal propaganda, and have felt in the merciless butchery of our great and good President the first taste of more to come, unless God grants the wisdom and teaches the way to defend our lives.

"Next to the anguish of the hour which has made strong men weep like children and melted hearts at the cruel desolation of a pure and loving home comes the dread engendered of a doubt as to the will and power of the nation to save its own life; whether there is force enough among us to rise and lay strong hold on this monster now distinctly revealed and upon us, in the murderous attack on the noblest and best in the land. Already we are beginning to hear it said that the people are rallying from the blow; that the first alarm is over; that all are recovering courage; that finance will soon flow again in its usual channels; that we shall go forward once more in the pursuit of arts and the ordinary vocations of the time. Yes, all this is well, but will the nation fail to act as a great nation should, to deal as it ought to do with the most deadly foe that it has or ever can have? For if this foe prevails, the nation, the state, the law, the government will disappear forever and ever. Are we to forget what has thrown us into this present mourning and these tears? Are we to lapse into a fatal apathy, and let the preaching of murder and inciting to murder and the applauding of murder go on as before? Are the laws still to protect the very persons who hate and detest them and are banded together for the overthrow of society? It seems to me that the most solemn issue of the hour is as to what we have to do who remain-whether we are equal to the occasion. Are we now to fall back before this enemy, the last and most dangerous we have ever encountered or ever shall, and let things drift from bad to worse, in new instances of a passion which spares not one life that stands in its way?

"There is a great deal to be said of the national sins which have led to such national judgments as we have felt and are feeling now; of the falling away from religious standards, of the loss of faith, of growing luxury and sin, of the decline in morals and piety which invite the judgments of heaven; of the indifference to law, the loss of respect for authority, the habit of railing at and writing on public men and telling lies about them, such as that gross one heard not long ago that our President was a traitor and would fain overthrow our republican and democratic government-for these things there will be time to speak later, but to-day I cannot speak of more than these two-the man and the crime.

"And so leave we the beloved and honored President to his rest and his future glory; for certainly his name will shine magnificently among those of the greatest of the lives immortal-with those of Washington and Lincoln; great for the way in which he guided the country through a mighty crisis in its fortunes; great in his closing words; great in his constant thought for others; great in his submission to the will of God-greatest perhaps in that deathbed scene, so perfectly accordant with the precepts of the Gospel and the example of his Savior." (Here Dr. Dix became so affected that he sobbed audibly.)

The Rev. Dr. Dix made the announcement that on Thursday, the day of the funeral, a Litany service would be held at noon, and that another service would be held in the afternoon of the same day, when the offices of the Idead would be read.

The foregoing expressions are given as expressing the general tone of the sermons delivered in all of the churches, from the stately cathedrals of the great cities, to the humble little frame or log buildings in remote communities.

CHAPTER XL.

CANTON'S FAREWELL TO MCKINLEY.

William McKinley had come home for the last time.

At Buffalo, at Washington and throughout the hundreds of miles between, the nation had mourned the dead President. The city and state which gave him to the nation now knelt and wept for him. life had been the greatest fact in their history. to say McKinley.

For a decade and more his To say Ohio or Canton was

Two weeks before he left them in the full tide of health and strength, followed by the cheers of his neighbors, who felt themselves honored in him, their President. And now he was brought back dead. He whose life was all of kindness and love had been stricken by the hand of an assassin. That thought added a bitter drop to the cup of woe which his city and state now drinks.

Canton had done its utmost a score of times in honor of William McKin ley. The demonstration as he came home with the representatives of a sorrowing nation and of sympathizing peoples in his funeral train rolled them all up into one supreme testimonial.

Imagine the picture. The city robed in black. Places of business are ciosed and draped. Crepe from public buildings and on private houses where death has never entered. Arches of mourning span the street. Flags looped with crepe and great banners of black and white wave overhead. The business block which bears his name, the old law office where he worked, are wrapped in mourning. The multitude is silent in the streets with loops of crepe on arms and shoulders.

The courthouse, scene of his early struggles as a lawyer, has been transformed, as it were, into a huge funeral crypt, swathed in the garb of sorrow from sill to tower peak. Across the front, shining in letters of gold against the somber background, is inscribed President McKinley's last message to those he loved: "It is God's way; His will, not ours, be done."

There the stricken President's body lay all day guarded by soldiers of the state and nation, only one step from the tomb, while his old friends and neighbors, companions of his early struggles and his later triumphs, streamed by for one last look at his face.