r leave, my friends,
instead of sticking very closely to the text, and treating it from
a purely party point of view, I propose to take a ramble through the
highways and byways of life and thought in our beloved country and to
cast a balance if I can from an American point of view.

"I want to say in the beginning that no party can save any man or any
set of men from the daily toil by which all of us live and move and have
our being."

Then I worked in my old lecture.

It went like hot cakes. When next I met William McKinley he said
jocosely: "You are a mean man, Henry Watterson!"

"How so?" I asked.

"I accepted the invitation to answer you because I wanted and needed the
money. Of course I had no time to prepare a special address. My idea was
to make my fee by ripping you up the back. But when I read the verbatim
report which had been prepared for me there was not a word with which I
could take issue, and that completely threw me out."

Then I told him how it had happened and we had a hearty laugh. He was
the most lovable of men. That such a man should have fallen a victim
to the blow of an assassin defies explanation, as did the murders of
Lincoln and Garfield, like McKinley, amiable, kindly men giving never
cause of personal offense.

II

The murderer is past finding out. In one way and another I fancy that
I am well acquainted with the assassins of history. Of those who slew
Caesar I learned in my schooldays, and between Ravaillac, who did the
business for Henry of Navarre, and Booth and Guiteau, my familiar
knowledge seems almost at first hand. One night at Chamberlin's, in
Washington, George Corkhill, the district attorney who was prosecuting
the murderer of Garfield, said to me: "You will never fully understand
this case until you have sat by me through one day's proceedings in
court." Next day I did this.

Never have I passed five hours in a theater so filled with thrills. I
occupied a seat betwixt Corkhill and Scoville, Guiteau's brother-in-law
and voluntary attorney. I say "voluntary" because from the first Guiteau
rejected him and vilely abused him, vociferously insisting upon being
his own lawyer.

From the moment Guiteau entered the trial room it was a theatrical
extravaganza. He was in irons, sandwiched between two deputy sheriffs,
came in shouting like a madman, and began at once railing at the judge,
the jury and the audience. A very necessary rule had been established
that when he i