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She had been a strong young woman, but the cares of motherhood had brought on an illness from which she has never recovered. However, she is stronger since the Major left Congress, and though unable to attend to any great amount of social duties, has many friends, and all who know her admire her for her patience and good spirits, her gentleness and devotion, and admiration for her husband.

She likes to see her friends and loves children, who know they are always welcome at her house. Mrs. McKinley is an adept with the needle, and she knits well, too. Many clothes and warm mitts and jackets she has made for friends and for the poor. They are prized greatly by all who get them. Mrs. McKinley travels a deal to be with her husband, and has often heard him speak, as on four or five occasions during the gubernatorial campaign of 1893. In that prolonged contest, when the Governor spoke more than three hundred times in eighty out of the eighty-eight counties of the State, he was never too weary after the last meeting on Saturday to take a train for Columbus, or Cincinnati, or Cleveland, or Chicago, where Mrs. McKinley happened to be, that he might spend Sunday with her. It was a beautiful devotion, and not at all surprising when the Major's tender care and solicitude for his wife is remembered.

Though an invalid, Mrs. McKinley has been cheerful and in trying times brave, never faltering in her belief in her husband and ever ready to cheer him.

Ill-health is trying and a test of disposition, but Mrs. McKinley has never complained, and has always been resigned. The death of her children, Kate and Ida (the latter was born on Christmas, 1871), was a cruel blow, but both the Major and his wife have borne their sorrow patiently and with Christian spirit. They have sought the happiness that their children would have given in closer union and in the enjoyment of the little ones of others.

CHAPTER III.

McKinley in Congress-The rapid growth of his National Reputation-Became the Champion of Protection-First in a National Convention.

In the five years that followed his retirement from the prosecuting attorneyship of Stark County, Ohio, Major McKinley had grown in popularity and in the estimation of his neighbors. In the centennial year he was brought forward as a candidate for the Republican congressional nomination. L. D. Woodsworth, of Mahoning, was the representative, and there were other candidates, including three from Stark County. That county then elected its delegates to the congressional convention by primaries in every township. To the surprise of his opponents William McKinley, who knew, and was known, in every hamlet and town and village and community in the county, carried all the townships but one, and that was so small that it had but one delegate. The Major had been through all the other counties of the old eighteenth district, and in one of them he was born. It was not a difficult matter to secure a majority in these counties, and as a result he was nominated with a cheer on the first ballot.

It is not surprising that the old political war-horses

of the district were amazed at this rise of a young man, only thirty-three. McKinley had triumphed, and never afterward was it possible to contest his right to represent that district. He dominated it. The Republican party was proud of him, and though it was not customary in that district, and in fact it is not the habit in any Ohio district, except the one which General Garfield and E. B. Taylor represented for so many years, to name a man for more than two terms. It is this habit that makes Ohio less of a power in the national house than she would otherwise be. A Congressman, as soon as he has learned the ways of Congress and has been there long enough to do good work for his district, is superseded by some ambitious man, unprepared to do as well as his predecessor; but the anxiety to become a statesman is so general in Ohio, and there is so much good timber there, that it is not surprising that this should be the case.

Major McKinley represented the eighteenth district for fifteen years. The Democrats gerrymandered him three times. He had been in the House but two years, one term, when his county was placed in a district that had a Democratic majority of 1,800. Major McKinley stumped the district from one end to the other, and carried it by 1,300 plurality— truly a great victory. In 1880 he was again elected. Thus by the time he was thirty-nine he had represented his district in Congress three times. In 1882 the district was again gerrymandered. He had a

majority on the face of the returns of eight votes. His opponent was named Wallace. Toward the end of the session of that Congress he was unseated by a Democratic House and Wallace given his place. That year, 1882, was not a very bright one for the Republicans. It will be recalled that then it was that Secretary Folger was defeated for Governor of New York by Grover Cleveland, of Buffalo, by a majority of 192,000 votes. This was the beginning of the rise of the man whom McKinley will succeed in the Presidential chair. How remarkable it seems, looking backward, that the ex-sheriff of Buffalo and the ex-mayor of the city of Buffalo should have been chosen Governor over such a tried and true Republican as Folger. However, Mr. Cleveland is now even more unpopular than the Republican party was when he was elected Governor. Secretary Folger told McKinley in 1882 that he had won a great victory to be returned to Congress at that time.

Unseated toward the end of the Forty-eighth Congress, McKinley was re-elected to the Forty-ninth, in 1884, by a great majority, and remained in Congress, being a member of the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth, and Fifty-first congresses, being defeated by a wicked gerrymander for the Fifty-second. Slowly but surely he has grown in influence. He had been modest in his first years of congressional life. A young man, full of enthusiasm and study and inheriting an interest in the industries of the country,

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