Returning to the White House, arriving there about a quarter before
eleven, after I had waited a few minutes in one of the small parlors,
the President came down the stairs rapidly, and I took note that his
movements were very alert. I had not seen him since the night when
Mrs. Garfield had notice of the illness that had become alarming, and
from which she was now convalescent, and said first: "Mrs. Garfield is
much better?"
"Yes, much better," said the President, "and getting health out of the
sea air. She has enjoyed it intensely, and will be able to join me day
after to-morrow at Jersey City, on the way to Williams College--the
sweetest old place in the world. Come and go with us; several of the
cabinet are going, and we shall have a rare time; come and go with us.
Have you ever seen the lovely country there?"
I answered, "No, I have not seen it; and, thanking you for the
invitation, shall not go; have too much to do. You will have a
vacation?"
"Yes," the President said, "and I am feeling like a schoolboy about
it. You should go. You were along with Harrison, Kirkwood, and me to
Chautauqua, you know. That was a great day's ride. Do you remember
those watermelons? They would have been first-rate if they had been on
ice a few hours."
"You had a hard day of it," I said; "forty speeches, weren't there?
And you will have another lot of speeches to make."
He said he did not mind the speeches.
"And how is your health," I asked; "any more indigestion? Ever try
Billy Florence's remedy, Valentine's meat juice, made in Richmond,
Virginia--great reputation abroad, little at home?"
He said he had never tried it, had forgotten it. Then, turning with an
air half comic, but with something of earnestness, he said, naming me
by way of start: "You have been holding a sort of autopsy over me ever
since I tumbled over at Atlantic City. I exposed myself there too long
both in the water and in the sun, but it was not so bad as you think."
I said he might pardon a degree of solicitude, under all the
circumstances, and he said he did not want any premature autopsies
held over him; and I put it that they had much better be premature.
Then the President said, with the greatest earnestness: "I am in
better health--indeed, quite well. It is curious, isn't it? My wife's
sickness cured me. I got so anxious about her I ceased to think about
myself. Both ends of the house were full of trouble. My wife's illness
was alarming, and I thought no more of the pit of my stomach and
the base of my brain and the top of my head; and when she was out of
danger, and my little troubles occurred to me--why, they were gone,
and I have not noticed them since. And so," said the President,
uttering the short words with deliberation, and picking them with
care, "and so, if one could, so to say, unself one's self, what a cure
all that would be!"
"The other end of the White House is better, is it not?" I asked.
"Not so much change there," said the President; "but one becomes
accustomed to heavy weather."
"Lord Roscoe is feeling happier, I hope," said I.
The President answered, dropping the "Lord Roscoe" comicality, and
speaking rapidly and seriously, with a flush of excitement: "Conkling,
after ten years of absolute despotism in New York--for Grant
did everything for him, and Hayes tried to comfort him--got the
elephantiasis of conceit. We read that gentlemen in Oriental
countries, having that disease in its advanced stage, need a
wheelbarrow or small wagon to aid their locomotion when they go out
to walk--and the population think there is something divine in it.
Conkling thought if he should go on parade in New York, and place the
developments of his vanity fully on exhibition, the whole people would
fall down and worship the phenomenon. But he was mistaken, for they
soon saw it was a plain, old-fashioned case of sore-head."
Then the President, having exhausted the elephantiasis as a divine
manifestation, expressed regrets that there had been such contentions
among those who should be friends of the administration; and repeated
his view of that which was due to the actual trust the people had
placed in him, and of which he could not honorably divest himself. He
thought the people already understood the case fairly well and would
be more and more of the opinion that he had tried to do the things
that were right, "with malice toward none and charity for all." We
talked until midnight. It was a Friday morning, and the President was
doomed to be shot the next day. The assassin had been on his path that
night. The President had gone out dining for the last time.
"And you will not go to Williams College with me?" he said.
I said: "Mr. President, you have forgotten you were assailed for being
in my company to Chautauqua; and I have been so fortunate since as to
gather a fresh crop of enemies, and do not want them to jump on to you
on my account--for there are enough upon you already."
That, the President said, was "curious and interesting," and he
laughed about my "fresh crop," and said something about cutting hay;
and I told him I had been invited to meet him Saturday night at Cyrus
W. Field's country place, where a dinner party was appointed; and
jumping up, hurried away. The light in the hall shone down on the
President's pale, high forehead, as he walked toward the stairway
leading to his apartments, and I saw him no more.
Something familiar struck me in the appearance of the watchman at
the door of the White House, and stopping, I said: "Did you hold this
position here in Lincoln's time?"
"Yes," said he, "I did."
"And did you not look after his safety sometimes?"
"I did, indeed," was the answer; "many a time I kept myself between
him and the trees there," pointing to them, "as we walked over to the
War Department to get the news from the armies. I did not know who
might be hidden in the trees, and I would not let him go alone."
"Did it ever occur to you," I asked, "that it would be worth while to
have a care that no harm happened here?"
"What, now?"
"Yes, now."
"Oh, it is different now--no war now."
"No," said I, "no war, but people are about who are queer; and there
are ugly excitements; think of it."
Of course, this conversation at the door of the White House the
midnight morning of the day before the President was shot, is
accounted for by the sensibility that there was a half-suppressed
public uneasiness that could mean some fashion of mischief, and
it might be of a deadly sort to the President, because he was so
formidably conspicuous. Nearly a year afterward, walking by General
Sherman's residence, I saw him sitting under a strong light, with his
back to the street, writing--doors and windows all open. I walked in,
saying: "General, I wouldn't sit with my back to an open window late
at night, under a light like this, if I were you. Some fool will come
along with a bull-dog pistol and the idea that death loves a shining
mark."
"Pooh!" said the old soldier. "Nobody interested in killing me. They
will let me well alone with their bull-dog pistols."
The White House shone like marble in the green trees as I drove
from the Arlington to the Potomac depot, July 1st, to take the train
corresponding to the one that had the President's car attached on the
following morning, when he meant to have a holiday of which he had
the most delightful anticipation, as one throwing off a brood of
nightmares. He was going back the President to the scene of his
struggles in early manhood for an education, going to what he called
the "sweetest place in the world," having reached the summit of
ambition, confident in himself, assured of the public good will, happy
to meet his wife restored to health, himself robust and to be, he
thought, hag-ridden no more; rejoicing to meet the dearest of old
friends, kindling with the realization of his superb and commanding
position, glowing with his just pride of place; no heart beating
higher, no imagination that exalted this mighty country more than his,
no brain that conceived with greater splendor the glory of the nation
than his, no American patriotism more true, brighter, broader, deeper,
more abounding than his; and all was shattered at a stroke by a
creature like a crawling serpent with a deadly sting.
All over the land the flags flew at half mast, and the woful news was
told: "The President is shot!" The man had fallen who, when Lincoln
was murdered, spoke the memorable words from the Treasury building, on
the spot where Washington was inaugurated: "The President is dead--but
God reigns and the Republic lives." There were nearly three months of
torture reserved for the second martyred President, and he bore
them with marvellous fortitude; and then, on a September night, the
throbbing of the bells from Scotland to California told, that the dark
curtain of death had fallen on the tragic drama of the Presidency of
Garfield.