he expert sent to test his
sanity. He was promptly placed upon trial, convicted, sentenced, and
executed, all without any of the unseemly incidents attending the trial
of Guiteau after Garfield's assassination. No heed was given to those
who, some of them from pulpits, fulminated anarchy as bad as that of the
anarchists by demanding that Czolgosz be lynched. These prompt but
perfectly orderly and dispassionate proceedings were a great credit to
the State of New York.

Leon Czolgosz, the murderer of President McKinley, was born in this
country, of Russian-Polish parentage, in 1875. He received some
education, was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Detroit, and later
employed in Cleveland and in Chicago. At the time of his crime he had
been working in a Cleveland wire mill. It was said that at Cleveland he
had heard Emma Goldman deliver an anarchist address, and that this
inspired his fell purpose. It was suspected that he was the tool of an
anarchist plot, and that the man preceding him in the line when he shot
the President was an accomplice, but there was no evidence that either
was true. There were indications that Czolgosz had made overtures to the
anarchists and been rejected as a spy. No accessories were found. Nor
did the dreadful act betoken that anarchism was increasing in our
country, or that any special propagandism in its favor was on. To all
appearance, it stood unrelated, so far as America was concerned.

Leon Czolgosz's heart had caught fire from the malignant passion of red
anarchy abroad, which had within seven years struck down the President
of France, the Empress of Austria, the King of Italy, and the Prime
Minister of Spain. In their fanatic diabolism its devotees impartially
hated government, whether despotic or free, and would, no doubt, gladly
have made America, the freest of the great commonwealths, for that
reason a hatching ground for their dark conspiracies.

[Illustration]
Interior of room in Wilcox House where
Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of Presidency.

They were no less hostile to one than to the other of our political
parties. The murder had no political significance, though certainly
calculated to rebuke virulent editorials and cartoons in political
papers, wont to season political debate with too hot personal condiment,
printed and pictorial. President McKinley had suffered from this and so
had his predecessor.

Upon such an occasion orderly government, both in the States and i