Address of Hon. John Dalzell, M.C. [excerpt]

AS I look on this splendid audience I am moved by mingled feelings of pleasure and of pain. By feelings of pleasure because I recognize so universal a desire to participate in a ceremony that excites the liveliest feelings of patriotism and love of country; by feelings of pain because of memories that the surroundings suggest. It has been my honor and my pleasure to speak on more than one occasion from this platform. I had an humble place in the dedication of this library. I am now most impressed with the fact that the last time I stood here to make an address was when I shared the privilege of speech with that beloved man whose memory is hallowed to-night wherever civilization extends in the hearts of all peoples, the martyred President, my friend, William McKinley. For me his charming personality pervades this place. I seem to hear again the ringing tones of his sympathetic voice, his inspiring call to high endeavor and to noble purpose, and for the moment I am fain to think it an unhealthy dream that anything so atrocious can be a part of American history as his death at the hands of a cowardly assassin. He was so brave, so manly, so gently [sic] and humane that the deep damnation of his taking off is almost beyond human conception. Fact in his case outruns fiction. Surely the poetic genius of all the ages must have had him in prophetic conception when he put into the mouth of the eulogist of Brutus the touching and immortal words:
     “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man.”