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     “The King is dead; long live the King!” Men die, while nations live. Yet men of character and force in their day and generation do not really die. They live on in the memories of their countrymen and in the influences which last long after them. Rich is that nation which has possessed great and good rulers. They are one of the essentials to good government and they add wealth to the whole world. America has been rich in splendid men, who were statesmen, preachers, orators, but especially has it been blessed in wise and faithful rulers. Washington, Adams, Jefferson began a line in which McKinley has been the last to fall, and as each has died the country has put on emblems of woe, with few exceptions, and thanked God that such rulers lived to bless their age and people. Of the many great names not born to die, Washington, Lincoln and McKinley will stand out brightest in the galaxy now passed into history. Washington, father of his country; Lincoln, saviour of his country; McKinley, lover of his country. Each builded better than he knew, and each possessed not only native genius for government of the highest order, but the loftiest kind of private character. Character gives strength to genius. It is fortunate for the rising generation that in McKinley there were all the elements that make a Man rather than simply those elements which make a Hero. He was every inch a Man! Wise as a statesman, prudent as an executive, strong in council and valiant in political conflicts, he was yet everywhere, and at all times, the gentlemanly gentleman, the manly man, and it is this which has drawn all the world unto him. Never before in the history of the nations did all the ends of the earth put on habiliments of mourning upon the death of a prince or peasant as it did September 19, the day of the funeral of President McKinley. From the Siberian ranges to the most southerly regions of the Cape of Good Hope, and from Alaska to Patagonia, as well as in the islands of the seas, there was weeping because a great ruler had departed. The assassin’s dagger had made the poignancy of the grief of his taking off the more severe, but had he died in sickness the same whole world would have mourned. It was the spontaneous tribute of the throbbing heart of all humanity to a ruler who wore no crown save the plaudits of the wide, wide world. And such a crown has not been worn since the days of King David, who was known, however, to but a small proportion of the then peoples of the earth.