Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination. Everett Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ the millions of Americans who were watching with eyes of love at that bedside—however near or remote they might be—had quite dismissed the thought of a fatal ending to the President’s case. They accepted his speedy recovery as a fact to be shared with jubilation, and had forgotten the grip of dismay and fear which seized them when the first news came.

      And out of this rising glow of happiness came, late Thursday night, another shock—the bitterer for the hope which had preceded it.

      “The President is worse.” That was the message men whispered to each other. After bulletins which exhausted the possibility of variety in statement came one which chilled the warm heart of the nation, and frightened far away the hope which had seemed so certain. The Thursday morning statement of physicians and secretary reported all that could be argued from the sanguine statements of preceding days.

      At three o’clock in the afternoon there was a note of distress in the reporting. The country had already been apprised, through the watchful press, of such “hurryings to and fro” as presaged a return of peril, and of fear. There were drawn, white faces at the windows of the Milburn house. The calm of preceding days was disturbed. Messengers were sent flying to various destinations. Carriages and automobiles rolled up or rolled away in a haste which could mean but burning anxiety. And in the evening hours came that carefully considered bulletin which was the more portentous for the very vagueness of its terms:

      Milburn House, Buffalo, N. Y., September 12.—The following bulletin was issued by the President’s physicians at 8:30 p. m.:

      The President’s condition this evening is not quite so good. His food has not agreed with him and has been stopped. Excretion has not yet been properly established. The kidneys are acting well. His pulse is not satisfactory, but has improved in the last two hours. The wound is doing well. He is resting quietly. Temperature, 100.2°; pulse, 128.

      P. M. Rixey,

      M. D. Mann,

      Roswell Park,

      Herman Mynter,

      Eugene Wasdin,

      Charles D. Stockton.

      George B. Cortelyou,

      Secretary to the President.

      Little by little the people learned. Early on Thursday there were signs of pain. There were alarming developments. The physicians, carefully scanning every evidence, breathlessly watching their patient’s every moment, learned that a relapse had come. They battled against it. They called up all the known agencies for assisting nature in opposing the grim enemy that threatened.

      But the President was sinking. That was the truth about it.

      All through Thursday night, all through Friday that battling for life went on, the patient, brave and uncomplaining victim of a reasonless shot, was subjecting himself utterly to the control of the medical men. And they were exhausting the possibilities of medicine and of surgery. They were doing all that man could do. They were rendering such service as king’s can not command. But the baffling difficulty continued. They could not understand.

      Down through the body, hidden from their eyes, ran the channel which a murderous bullet had plowed. And in every inch of its course the fatal gangrene had settled. Death was at his feast in the President’s body!

      Nothing could check that devastation. Nothing could spur the heart to combat longer. Nothing could restore those pulses to normal beating.

      The President was dying!

      All through the early hours of Friday night it was known he could not live to another sunrise. Friends, relatives, cabinet officers, the Vice President—all were summoned; and they were hastening to the bedside in the hush of an awful sorrow.

      At three o’clock Friday morning all of the physicians were gathered at the bedside of the President. It was stated that digitalis was being administered. Drs. Mynter and Mann arrived at the house at 2:40, having been sent for hurriedly.

      Dr. Park reached the house at 2:50, and shortly after him came Secretaries Hitchcock and Wilson.

      Several messengers were hurried from the house and it was understood that they carried dispatches to the absent members of the Cabinet and the kin of the President.

      Additional lights burned. The household was astir. It was manifest that the wounded President faced a grave and menacing crisis.

      Alarm could be read in the faces of those to whose nursing and care he was committed.

      Mrs. Newell, one of the trained nurses suddenly called, arrived at 3:15. She sprang from an electric carriage and ran down the sidewalk to the house.

      The scene about the house was dramatic. The attendants could be seen hurrying about behind the unshaded and brightly lighted windows, and messengers came and went hastily through the guarded door.

      Outside half a hundred newspaper correspondents were assembled awaiting news.

      Meanwhile the nation—the world—stood watching for the final word. Buffalo, where the President was assassinated, stood agape with horror and rage.

      It was past midday when he had entered upon his final struggle. The thousands gathered at the Pan-American Exposition, the nation and the outside world were not prepared even then for a realization that the worst was at hand.

      A furious rainstorm was sweeping the city when the first ominous announcement came from the Milburn house:

      “President McKinley is dying. He can live but a few moments.”

      Then signal service operators took possession of the telegraph wires leading to the house of death. Cabinet officers and members of the President’s family began to arrive, and the beginning of the end had come.

      Then it was announced that the President might live for several hours. But even then his limbs were growing cold and his pulse was fluttering with the feeble efforts of his will alone. He was conscious. Every light in the house was aglow.

      Within, the wife had paid her last tribute to her dying sweetheart of thirty years. Dr. Rixey led her into the room, and as she laid her head alongside his she sobbed:

      “I cannot let him go.”

      She knew that the President was dying then, and in the dim silence of her adjoining room she waited and wept as the hours sped and the doctors wondered at the mighty battle of the dying man.

      It was midnight when Secretary Long of the Navy arrived. He found his beloved chief alive, but unconscious, and Dr. Mann told him, as he stood in the hallway, “The President is pulseless and dying, but he may live an hour.”

      At half an hour past midnight Coroner Wilson arrived at the Milburn house, and an unfounded announcement of McKinley’s death was quickly telegraphed to all parts of the country. He left as soon as he found that the order summoning him was a mistake.

      But the President, now finally unconscious, and breathing but faintly, struggled on. Midnight, 1 and 2 o’clock, found him wavering on the verge, and the men of science could but stand and marvel at the wondrous but hopeless fight which he had maintained so long. Intervals of apparent consciousness came upon him. Sometimes he opened his fading eyes and gazed calmly around.

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