Gambols and Travels [excerpt]

Garvey remembers the night in question, although he doesn’t remember the exact date. He and Disston left the theatre together. Disston was a convivial person, and the company being that week in Providence, Rhode Island, Disston and Garvey went to the rooms of the Musicians’ Union, where there were some beer and songs and music until a late hour. They then started to go home, but in order to do so were obliged to pass the office of the Providence Journal. In front of this building about a [375][376] thousand men were gathered, watching the bulletins in the windows. As the last one appeared Disston took his cornet from its case.
     My own relation to that occasion was this: I was in bed in the stately old Narragansett Hotel. The night was warm. Two windows of the room were open. At about three o’clock in the morning I was wakened by the sound of the cornet. It came over the night air, carrying the strains of that impressive old hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” It took a moment to recognize this, and then the expertness of the playing convinced me that the player was Disston. I got out of bed and leaned on the window-sill. As the cornet began a repetition of the hymn it was joined by a male chorus of some thousand voices, and there plainly came the words: “E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me.” I knew then that President William McKinley, who had lain wounded for a week in Buffalo, was dead. I was surprised as I listened to the finish of the hymn to find that my cheeks were wet with tears. “Nearer, My God, to Thee” had been a favorite hymn with my grandmother. My mind went back to her and the death of President Lincoln—to the tears, the solemnity of that tragic time—and, in the middle distance, Garfield.