There was a very strong muster of forces in 1900 against the continuance of the national administration on the lines followed by McKinley. In other words, the disposition of the country was to divide, not so confidingly as usual, as for and against the Government as opponents and advocates of the administration. There was no man in the Cabinet who had an undue share of public attention. McKinley was dominant, and that made the antagonisms of the campaign largely for and against McKinley as a personage. The presumption that there was any man in the Cabinet, Senate or House who was a power greater than the individuality in the great office, was founded on error. When McKinley died those who knew him most intimately were the most moved. The entire nation knew his character, and more than any President he seemed to belong to each and every citizen of the republic. It was his lovable nature, his thoughtfulness for others, his consideration of their feelings, and his constant desire to aid others, that made him loved. He was gentle without lacking in strength, tender without wanting in any attitude of manliness. He hated to give offense and was pained when any one was in sorrow. Such a character is given to few men, such a combination of strength and gentleness, such firmness and thoughtfulness for others. He freely forgave those who had offended or misrepresented or injured him. He invariably did unto others as he would have them do unto him. He was naturally religious and in his life he exemplified the teachings of Christianity. After all, the man rather than the magistrate was wounded. He had a place in the hearts of the people of the South. There was something in his fellowship, his comradeship that was peculiarly pleasing to the people of that section. They knew he was a true soldier when first elected, and that he was a real statesman when his second presidential campaign was on. Yet had it not been for the racial question his support in the Southern States, on the platform of the results of his first administration—indeed by the results--would have been most formidable. It is a most interesting fact that there were more telegrams of affectionate solicitude for the stricken President from Texas than from any other State, excepting New York, the State in which the assassin fired the fatal shot. As keen regret has been shown in the South for the common misfortune as in the North. No President since the war has seemed to the Southern people to belong to them absolutely as William McKinley did. The men and women of the South fully appreciated that he had no unpleasant memories of civil strife,

but they knew that his ambition, as a patriot who loved his country and sought to promote its best interests, was to wipe out the last signs of the sectional division. And the success of his policy of making the South as integral a part of the nation in sentiment as it is territorially was shown during the war with Spain, and has been emphasized by the general grief at his death. He believed that the South would benefit and prosper; that if the people could be divided among the two parties, if principle and not prejudice were to guide political questions, it would be better for the South and consequently for the entire nation. As a patriot he wished to see the South prosper, and he did everything in his power to that end. As a man he loved the Southern people and knew them, understood them better than any man of the North (with here and there a very rare exception) who has not resided there.

It has been said of McKinley's farewell address, for such it will be well to call his Buffalo speech, there had been an uncommon inspiration in it. This passage, "Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war."

Then came what may be termed his benediction, and that gave the clearest light upon the real character of the man whose sudden death our country mourns:

"Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors and like blessings to all peoples and powers on earth."

The London Times correspondent cabled, on the day of the assassination, before that disaster:

"Intense interest has been excited throughout the country by President McKinley's speech at Buffalo yesterday, which is regarded as one of the finest speeches he has ever made. The general consensus of opinion is that, while it represents a great departure from his former attitude towards protection, it is not necessarily inconsistent with it."

There is no doubt President McKinley knew his strength before the country, for there were few more careful or experienced observers than himself, and in his Buffalo speech he said:

"The world's products are now exchanged as they never were before, and prices are fixed with mathematical precision by the law of supply and demand. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. Trade statistics indicate that the country is in a state of unexampled prosperity:

and the figures are almost appalling. That all the people is participating in this great prosperity is seen by the unprecedented deposits in the savings banks. Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously that the problem of more markets requires immediate attention. A system which provides for the mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly essential. We must not repose in the fancied security that we can for ever sell everything and buy little or nothing. Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development. If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to protect our industries, why should they not be employed to extend our markets abroad?"

This last utterance is an admirably condensed statement of the glory won in the first administration. It is scarcely intelligible that the elected chief of a State, like President McKinley, should be marked out for destruction, when it is certain that, by the automatic operation of a democratic system, his place will be taken by a successor, already designated by law, with the same authority, and, probably, with a prestige enhanced by the abhorrence which the criminal removal of his forerunner must produce. The frame of mind can hardly be conceived in which the murder of Mr. McKinley can have presented itself as an object from the attainment of which any social or political advantage was to be derived. The President of the United States had lately been elected for a second term by an overwhelming majority. He was the spokesman of the opinions which are in the ascendant throughout the Union. He had never been credited with a masterful or domineering spirit. His fault, indeed, had rather been that he had trimmed his sails too closely to the varying gales of public opinion and that he had rarely had a policy of his own. But this is a criticism to which many statesmen in many countries are exposed. Mr. McKinley, at any rate, had had the support of his own people and had earned the respect and the esteem of the rest of the world.

CHAPTER X.

THE HIGH-WATER MARK OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY.

McKinley's Administration Attained It-Let It Be the Policy of All to Maintain It-The Apotheosis of Our Martyr President is Instantaneous--He is Already Engraved Upon the Hearts of the People Above Party Strife-Character Study of Garfield and McKinley -The Peacefully Glorious Death of the President Will Be Immortal-The Power of Publicity.

William McKinley did not escape the educational experience of su percilious injustice. There were those who always affected to see someone else acting with him as friend and master, philosopher and guide, and who strained comparisons, and dealt perversely with the records, that they might assume their own superiority, and this was because McKinley was not a man of quarrels and was acquainted with grievances that he was too serene to trouble himself to contest and resent. His forward march was so steady, his advance and elevation so continuous, that the baffled and the envious denied him great merit by asserting he was lucky and insinuated that somebody dominated him. He was lucky like Grant-he won victories-and, like the general, he was a winner who did not boast. The sword did not devour forever with Grant, and the winnings were pro bono publico. McKinley was a growing man all his years, and as President he was a marvel of executive capacity, personal industry, and so ready was he for great occasions that his command of opportunities was but slowly understood and is not yet appreciated. That which he did for peace before the war with Spain, and for peace with honor in the Philippines, and his sense of justice touching our relations with the East and West Indies, and the Hawaiian group, will, as the whole truth is unfolded, increase the reputation of his manhood, the excellence of his statesmanship and the comprehension of his subordination of prejudices, and putting aside the smaller views that sustain selfishness, that the ideals of international policy might be maintained.

He was a man of good and high fortune, one more fortunate than Lincoln, who fell on the field that none but he could plow, leaving it unfinished. Lincoln had a glimpse of the great hereafter of the country of which he was the savior, as Washington was the father. William Mc

Kinley saw the glory of his works. Prosperity to the people had come, as he said it would, according to the very diagrams he drew. Already his fame fills the world. In no country outside ours has there been ignorance of or indifference for years to the fact that his works had given him rank as a man of affairs, surpassing any head of a government, and we may take into account all the nations. Curiously enough, the closest approach of those who are well-doing among rulers are our two nearest neighbors, the President of Mexico and the Premier of the Dominion of Canada, and in saying this we enhance the compliment when we mention that we have not forgotten to consider carefully the distinction of forcible talent in the Emperor of Germany or the amiable and excellent longevity of the Emperor of Austria, who has to deal with nearly as many races as we have States.

Abraham Lincoln has for a long time stood alone before the world as the foremost of Americans, leaving undecided whether we should include in the scope of the declaration the fathers of the Revolution. There are many American citizens still active who remember when Lincoln was held to be a partisan, narrow, intense within a limited scope, but a politician one-sided and wrong-minded. We omit purposely the teeming caricatures and vindictive epithets with which he was assailed. Now he is claimed by all parties. No man is more frequently quoted as having held doctrines irreconcilable with those of the party to which he was attached. The fact is too familiar to be fortified by ready references. It is well that all the people now approve Mr. Lincoln. Once upon a time nearly all of them were against him. He has compensation for the misleading observations that were once so strenuously applied by the misled. Happy the land that it knows at last the benignant, the humane, Lincoln, whose war papers as we read them now are found full of love for enemies, and benevolent to those he found making haste on the broad walk to destruction.

It has not been long-the time is easily counted, but may as well be forgotten-when William McKinley was held by a vast multitude of his countrymen as a partisan. These lines are written during this month, the opening of which saw him full of strength, looking not backward to find that which had been said in opposition to his principles, and even in unfriendliness to his personality, but his eyes fixed upon the future, and in his last speech, his farewell address, he referred with pride to the stupendous resources of his country, and pointed out the employment that should be given the prosperity of the people. We shall soon find-the