Maryland’s View of Funeral Train

NO hope of expected eloquence or fervor of political campaign ever brought out one-tenth the crowd that assembled about Union Station awaiting to catch, if possible, a single glimpse of the train bearing the body of the dead President to the national capital, so long the stage for his wise official action and the charming courtesy of his private life. It was conservatively estimated that nearly 20,000 people stood for hours as near to the approaches leading to the station as they could manage to reach. The prevailing tone of this vast multitude was a deep sadness, while, in many cases, the gloom of the occasion deepened into a melancholy that could only be relieved by tears.
     The party accompanying the remains were likewise saturated with the all-pervading spirit of depression, and surely no statesman was ever honored by a more sincere and deep regret on the part of his official family and the politically prominent throughout the length and breadth of his own native land. This tribute to the dead executive is a truer criterion of his native worth and personal charm than any official regrets or well-worded resolutions of sympathy. This has been given to William McKinley ever since that fatal afternoon in Buffalo, and has only continued to deepen and strengthen throughout his suffering and death.
     All along the line of travel the people have congregated by the roadbed and caught a fleeting glimpse of the remains as they have flashed by, inclosed in the glass covering of the special observation car. For hours the people have stood and strained anxious eyes lest by any mischance the train swept by them unobserved until too late. Men, women and children, all of them—the young, the old, the whole and those afflicted—have waited for the remains of their martyred chief to pass the local habitations of their little lives. And each life has bettered and each heart softened and been cleared by the thoughts caused through this one heroic soul’s time of trial so gloriously endured and so nobly ended. The remains of such as William McKinley enrich the earth to which they are returned; they make it better to live upon, and enable the survivors to look destiny more confidently in the face through the thought of what one man had been as an example of what other men might strive to emulate.