Excerpt from In Memoriam, William McKinley, September 14, 1901, Vol. 1 The seventy millions of this great nation are bowed to-day in the deepest grief, and around this vast household of affliction the civilized world gathers in a loving sympathy, such as no historian has ever recorded, such as no prophet has dared to foretell. Presidents have died in office before. On the fourth of April, 1841, William Henry Harrison was struck down by disease after an official career of one short month. On the ninth of July, 1850, Zachary Taylor obeyed the summons of the stern monarch, leaving with his last breath this noble testimony, "I have always done my duty. I am ready to die." Within the memory of most of this congregation, Abraham Lincoln, in the hour of his grandest triumph and richest honors, fell by the shot of an assassin April 14, 1865; and on September 19, 1881, James A. Garfield, the Christian, the scholar, the eloquent statesman, died from the shot of a worthless vagabond, just when there were opening before him vast possibilities of usefulness. And now again by the hand of a dastardly crime our President has fallen; fallen in an hour of unprecedented prosperity, when peace had crowned the labors of four years, so patiently, so faithfully, so prayerfully performed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.