“Played” M’Kinley Is Dead

Parent Found Children Had Started Game Long Before President Was Shot.

     A Cleveland professional man, who lives in the East End, told the following interesting story yesterday: He is not a believer “spooks” and he is not a person who is in the habit of spinning yarns. He regards the whole matter as the story of a pure coincidence:
     “I read of the attack on the president,” said the professional man, “at about 4 o’clock Friday afternoon. I went to my home, eight miles east of the city, reaching there at 5:30 o’clock. I found my little five-year-old boy in my yard. He had for companions in play a six-year-old neighbor and my year-old baby. The two older boys, who often ‘play soldier,’ had the baby in a wagon and were pretending that he was president and that the president had been shot. They said they were detectives and that they were acting as body guards [sic] for the wounded president. I entered my house and told my wife that Mr. McKinley had been shot. My wife laughed, and said, ‘Yes, I know; the boys have been playing that all the afternoon.’
     “I had difficulty in making my wife believe that a real attempt had been made upon the life of the president. I found that I was the first person in the neighborhood to know of the crime. I found that the children knew nothing at all of the real crime, and that they had been playing that McKinley was shot for some time before the actual crime was committed. I regard the whole thing as pure coincidence, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?”