Response of the President to the Address of Welcome [excerpt]

     MR. CHAIRMAN, AND MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN—I should be false to my own instincts, and I am sure to yours as well, did I permit my first utterance on this occasion to be aught else than an expression of the overwhelming sorrow into which we have been plunged by the sudden and tragical death of the beloved and revered chief magistrate of one of the nations here represented. I do not permit myself to doubt that the delegates from the other countries share with those of us who have lost our President, this sense of profound grief with which our hearts are rent and our heads are bowed, and of keen disappointment that a career so noble and so useful should have been thus abruptly cut short by the bullet of the assassin. Indeed, the spontaneous tribute of sympathy and of eulogy conveyed in such eloquent and feeling language to which we this morning listened from the mouths of the representatives of the Dominion of Canada and the Republic of Mexico absolutely forbid such a thought. Our consolation is that, in death as in life, he bore himself nobly as a patriot, a Christian and a gentleman, leaving an unsullied name as a legacy to his countrymen.