To Lady Jeune

September 14, 1901.     

     The President was one of the sweetest and quietest natures I have ever known among public men. I can hear his voice and see his face as he said all the kind and consoling things a good heart could suggest. And now he too is gone and left the world far poorer by his absence.
     I wonder how much of grief we can endure. It seems to me I am full to the brim. I see no chance of recovery—no return to the days when there seemed something worth while. Yet I feel no disgust of life itself,—only regret that so little is left, and so narrow a field of work remaining.
     . . . What a strange and tragic fate it has been of mine—to stand by the bier of three of my dearest friends, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, three of the gentlest of men, all risen to the head of the State, and all done to death by assassins.
     I think you know Mr. Roosevelt, our new President. He is an old and intimate friend of mine: a young fellow of infinite dash and originality. He [266][267] has gone to Canton to lay our dear McKinley to rest, and asked me to stay here on the avowed ground that, as I am the next heir to the Presidency, he did not want too many eggs in the same Pullman car. . . .