treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the
latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us, who
soon or late must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the
leaves of the protesting forest, or the murmur of the waves that break
upon the complaining shore.

THE DEATH OF GARFIELD[39]

JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE

On the morning of Saturday, July second, the President was a contented
and happy man--not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly,
happy. On his way to the railroad-station, to which he drove slowly, in
conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of
leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the
grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial
his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular
favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting
him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that trouble lay behind
him, and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he
loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted
and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his alma mater to
renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to
exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed
every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his
college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift
of his countrymen.

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a
happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest premonition
of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant.
One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching
peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless,
doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,
its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And
he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned
and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,
but through days of deadly languor, t