e caught and repeated in every town, village, and hamlet in the North,
the funeral procession started westward. It passed in grandeur through the
great cities on its journey of one thousand six hundred miles to the tomb.
By day, by night, by dawn, by sunlight, by twilight, and lit by solemn
torches, millions of silent men and women looked on his dead face. Around
the person of this tall, lonely man, rugged, yet full of sombre dignity
and spiritual beauty, the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and ideals of the
people had gathered in four years of agony and death, until they had come
to feel their own hearts beat in his breast and their own life throb in
his life. The assassin's bullet had crashed into their own brains, and
torn their souls and bodies asunder.

The masses were swept from their moorings, and reason destroyed. All
historic perspective was lost. Our first assassination, there was no
precedent for comparison. It had been over two hundred years in the
world's history since the last murder of a great ruler, when William of
Orange fell.

On the day set for the public funeral twenty million people bowed at the
same hour.

When the procession reached New York the streets were lined with a million
people. Not a sound could be heard save the tramp of soldiers' feet and
the muffled cry of the dirge. Though on every foot of earth stood a human
being, the silence of the desert and of death! The Nation's living heroes
rode in that procession, and passed without a sign from the people.

Four years ago he drove down Broadway as President-elect, unnoticed and
with soldiers in disguise attending him lest the mob should stone him.

To-day, at the mention of his name in the churches, the preachers' voices
in prayer wavered and broke into silence while strong men among the crowd
burst into sobs. Flags flew at half-mast from their steeples, and their
bells tolled in grief.

Every house that flew but yesterday its banner of victory was shrouded in
mourning. The flags and pennants of a thousand ships in the harbour
drooped at half-mast, and from every staff in the city streamed across the
sky the black mists of crape like strange meteors in the troubled
heavens.

For three days every theatre, school, court, bank, shop, and mill was
closed.

And with muttered curses men looked Southward.

Across Broadway the cortege passed under a huge transparency on which
appeared the words:

"A Nation bowed in grief