ine and trembled
and trembled until I got right up to him, and then I shot him twice
through my white handkerchief. I would have fired more, but I was
stunned by a blow in the face--a frightful blow that knocked me
down--and then everybody jumped on me. I thought I would be killed, and
was surprised the way they treated me."

Czolgosz ended his story in utter exhaustion. When he had about
concluded he was asked:

"Did you really mean to kill the President?"

"I did," was the cold-blooded reply.

"What was your motive; what good could it do?"

"I am an anarchist. I am a disciple of Emma Goldman. Her words set me on
fire," he replied, with not the slightest tremor.

During the first few days after he was shot there were cheering
bulletins issued by the medical fraternity in attendance, all typical of
his early recovery, and the heart of the nation was elated, to be, a
week later, depressed with sadness at the announcement that a change had
come and that the President was dying. Never was grief more sincere for
a ruler. He was buried encased with the homage and love of his people.
William McKinley will live in history, not only as a man whose private
life was stainless, and whose Administration of the Government was
beyond reproach, but as one brilliant, progressive, wise, and humane.

Pre-eminent as an arbiter and director, developing the nation as a world
power, and bringing to the effete and semi-civilized peoples of the
Orient the blessings of civilized Government; as a leader and protector
of the industrial forces of the country, William McKinley was
conspicuous. With strength of conviction, leading at one time an almost
forlorn hope, by his statesmanship and intensity of purpose, he had
grafted on the statute books of the Nation a policy that has turned the
wheels of a thousand idle mills, employed a hundred thousand idle hands,
and stimulated every manufacturing industry.

This accomplished, in his last speech, memorable not only as his last
public utterance, but doubly so as to wise statesmanship in its advocacy
of a less restrictive tariff, increased reciprocity, and interchange
with the world's commodities. His love of justice was imperial. He was
noted in this, that he was not only mentally eminent, but morally great.
During his last tour in the South, while endeavoring to heal animosities
engendered by the civil war and banish estrangement, he was positive in
the display of heartfelt interest in the Ne