bade farewell to those about him. "Good-by, good-by,
all; it is God's way; His will be done." The murmured words came from
his lips, "Nearer, my God, to Thee; e'en tho' it be a cross that raiseth
me."

At the early morning hour of 2.45, Saturday, September 14th, the rest
which is deeper than any sleep came to the sufferer. The autopsy showed
that death was due to gangrene of the tissues in the path of the wound,
the system having failed to repair the ravages of the bullet that had
entered the abdomen.

The next Monday morning, after a simple funeral ceremony at the Milburn
mansion, the remains were reverently borne to the Buffalo City Hall,
where, till midnight, mourning columns filed past the catafalque. The
body lay in state under the Capitol rotunda at Washington for a day, and
was borne thence, hardly a moment out of hearing of solemn bells or out
of sight of half-masted flags and dumb, mourning multitudes, to the old
home at Canton, Ohio. Here the late Chief Magistrate's fellow-townsmen,
his old army comrades, and other thousands joined the procession to the
cemetery or tearfully lined the streets as it passed.

[Illustration]
Ascending the Capitol steps at Washington, D, C.,
where the casket lay in state in the Rotunda.

On the day of the interment, September 19th, appropriate exercises,
attended by enormous concourses of people, occurred all over the
country, and even in foreign parts. In hardly an American town of size
could a single building contain the crowd, overflow meetings being
necessary, filling several churches or halls. Special commemorative
services were held in Westminster Cathedral by King Edward's orders.

No king was ever honored by obsequies so widespread or more sincere.
Messages of condolence poured in upon the widow from the four quarters
of the globe. Business was suspended. For five minutes telegraph clicks
and cable flashes ceased, and for ten minutes, upon many lines of
railway and street railway, every wheel stood still.

None but the rash undertook, at once after his lamented decease, to
assign President McKinley's name to its exact altitude on the roll of
America's illustrious men. Ardent eulogists spoke of him as beside the
nation's greatest statesman, Lincoln, while his most pronounced
opponents in life accorded him very high honor. During his career he had
been accused of opportunism, of inconsistency, of partiality to the
moneyed interests of the country. His views of gre