George Bruce Cortelyou, Secretary of Commerce [excerpt]

     None who saw what he did for President McKinley at Buffalo, and what he was doing at the same time for the Government and the country, in the hours when their interests were for the time being practically in his hands, failed to see that his qualities and powers were equal to any necessity. When McKinley fell in his arms at the Temple of Music, Cortelyou had to act for the President, and also to act as the President, and he showed equal wisdom and courage in both relations, besides that tenderness and loyalty which only his closest friends fully know. And all with such modesty of heart reflected in such simplicity of manner! No wonder that Secretary Cortelyou is so popular in the best sense of that word.