Husband and Wife

     One of the many striking and touching incident [sic] occurring at Buffalo was the meeting between the President and Mrs. McKinley for the first time after the assault. The dispatches report that Mrs. McKinley took a seat at the bedside and held the President’s hand. The distinguished sufferer looked into the face of his good wife and said in a low tone, “We must bear up; it will be better for us both.” With tears streaming down her cheeks, Mrs. McKinley nodded assent.
     There is a depth of pathos in this little incident that must appeal forcefully to those who appreciate the strength of the ties that bind a good husband to a good wife.
     There may be some people who have no idea of the thoughts that were passing through the minds of this couple at that moment. There are, however, many others who can imagine what these thoughts were. There, on the bed of pain, lay the strong, powerful man. By his side sat the frail woman, whose physical weakness has been, for so many years, the subject of this husband’s tender solicitude. In an humble way they began life together. Two little graves had for them a common interest. In prosperity and in adversity they had stood together, participating equally in the joys and sharing equally in the sorrows of life. The wife had shared in the great honors that had come to her husband, and now, when the very summit of political ambition had been reached and political honors had become so common that the conveniences of a quiet, domestic life were longed for by the woman, in order, as she often expressed it, that she might have her husband to herself, the bullet of an assassin had done the work that threatened to blast the highest ambition of this woman’s life.
     “We must bear up,” said the president; “it will be better for us both.” It matters not to what extent other men and women may have grieved; it matters not how many tears other men and women may have shed and how much other hearts may have ached. All of this grief and woe could not have been so acute as was the grief and woe which this man and woman suppressed in compliance with the suggestion, “it will be better for us both.”
     There is nothing in all this world more beautiful than a happy marriage. There is in all this world nothing more inspiring, nothing [1][2] more encouraging than the devotion and love that abounds between thousands of men and women; devotion and love which were exemplified in the relations that existed between the late president and his wife.