Woman’s Ways [excerpt]

     THE hearts of all women will go out in sympathy to Mrs. McKinley, the fragile wife of the murdered President, who is now so bravely bearing one of the greatest sorrows a woman’s life can know. In these days when the divorce courts fill so rapidly and so much is heard about incompatibility of temper and general misunderstanding, the ideal life of the late President and his wife stands out the more clearly by its very contrast; and fortunately it stands not alone. We have admired numerous great statesmen who were great in their private as well as in their public life, men like Gladstone, Beaconsfield, Bismarck and others, whose chief appeal to the sympathies of the nation was in their domestic character. The pretty story of the late President’s courtship is by now too well known for me to repeat it. When the earnest teacher asked the young girl if she would always “go his way,” she little dreamt “that way” would lead him to the Presidency of the American people, nor of the terrible ending the journey would have. Universal is the sympathy for the fragile little wife bereft of that devoted and tender care lavished upon her by her great-hearted husband, whose generous nature so chivalrously responded to her greater need for loving protection. For twenty years she has been more or less an invalid, in fact, ever since the loss of her two children; and now that her husband has been taken from her we can only reverently re-echo her own words and pray “God help her.”