at
anarchy was deadlier still.

How many countries can join with us in the community of a kindred
sorrow! I will not speak of those distant regions where assassination
enters into the daily life of government. But among the nations bound to
us by the ties of familiar intercourse--who can forget that wise and
mild autocrat who had earned the proud title of the liberator? that
enlightened and magnanimous citizen whom France still mourns? that brave
and chivalrous king of Italy who only lived for his people? and, saddest
of all, that lovely and sorrowing empress, whose harmless life could
hardly have excited the animosity of a demon? Against that devilish
spirit nothing avails,--neither virtue nor patriotism, nor age nor
youth, nor conscience nor pity. We can not even say that education is a
sufficient safeguard against this baleful evil,--for most of the
wretches whose crimes have so shocked humanity in recent years were men
not unlettered, who have gone from the common schools, through murder to
the scaffold.

The life of William McKinley was, from his birth to his death, typically
American. There is no environment, I should say, anywhere else in the
world which could produce just such a character. He was born into that
way of life which elsewhere is called the middle class, but which in
this country is so nearly universal as to make of other classes an
almost negligible quantity. He was neither rich nor poor, neither proud
nor humble; he knew no hunger he was not sure of satisfying, no luxury
which could enervate mind or body. His parents were sober, God-fearing
people; intelligent and upright, without pretension and without
humility. He grew up in the company of boys like himself, wholesome,
honest, self-respecting. They looked down on nobody; they never felt it
possible they could be looked down upon. Their houses were the homes of
probity, piety, patriotism. They learned in the admirable school readers
of fifty years ago the lessons of heroic and splendid life which have
come down from the past. They read in their weekly newspapers the story
of the world's progress, in which they were eager to take part, and of
the sins and wrongs of civilization with which they burned to do battle.
It was a serious and thoughtful time. The boys of that day felt dimly,
but deeply, that days of sharp struggle and high achievement were before
them. They looked at life with the wondering yet resolute eyes of a
young esquire in his vig