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Source: New-York Tribune
Source type: newspaper
Document type: article
Document title: “Rejoicing in Buffalo”
Author(s): anonymous
City of publication: New York, New York
Date of publication: 9 September 1901
Volume number: 61
Issue number: 20021
Pagination: 2

 
Citation
“Rejoicing in Buffalo.” New-York Tribune 9 Sept. 1901 v61n20021: p. 2.
 
Transcription
full text
 
Keywords
Milburn residence (visitors); Marcus Hanna (at Buffalo, NY); William McKinley (medical condition); Marcus Hanna (public statements); McKinley assassination (news coverage: criticism); William McKinley (medical care: criticism: personal response); William McKinley (official bulletins: contents and quality of); Theodore Roosevelt (public statements); Robert Todd Lincoln (public statements); Robert Todd Lincoln; William McKinley (medical condition: public response).
 
Named persons
Marcus Hanna; Abraham Lincoln; Robert Todd Lincoln; Ida McKinley; William McKinley; John G. Milburn; Presley M. Rixey; Theodore Roosevelt.
 
Document

 

Rejoicing in Buffalo

 

ROOSEVELT AND HANNA DISCUSS THE GOOD NEWS—
SCENES IN THE STREETS.

     Buffalo, Sept. 8.—Senator Hanna is to-day more confident than ever that President McKinley will live. He came to Buffalo on Saturday morning broken in spirit and fearful that his almost lifelong friend would die from the effects of the anarchist’s bullet. To-day he is strong in the faith that the President is winning the grim fight with pain. Senator Hanna’s solicitude has been like that of a father for a stricken son. Saturday morning the Senator at the earliest practicable hour sought the Milburn house. All the information possible was laid before him, and he left the house a little more buoyant. Again and again he sought the latest details from the sickroom. At 6 o’clock on Saturday night he got hold of Dr. Rixey, and had his first satisfactory talk with the doctor. It was then that he gave The Tribune correspondent the statement used yesterday. Senator Hanna was one of the earliest visitors at the house this morning. The President’s comparatively comfortable night greatly encouraged him. He told his friends he was sure his stricken friend would survive. This afternoon he was again at the house with Vice-President Roosevelt. When he stepped out on the sidewalk in Delaware-ave. he looked up at the sky, and then benevolently returned the inquiring glances of the newspaper men.
     “I notice,” said Senator Hanna, “that there are suggestions that the physicians are coloring and withholding the truth in their bulletins, and that the bulletins do not show the President’s real condition. These stories are outrageous, and they should not be circulated. The physicians are giving the facts to the public.”
     Vice-President Roosevelt, with evident earnestness, here laid his hand on Senator Hanna’s arm.
     “Senator,” said he, “let me put it this way. The doctors’ bulletins are made with a scrupulous understatement of the favorableness of conditions—a scrupulous understatement,” added Colonel Roosevelt with emphasis.
     “That expresses the idea,” said the Senator.
     “It is a fact,” reasserted Colonel Roosevelt, “that the doctors, if anything, understate the hopefulness of the situation.”
     Again Senator Hanna asented [sic], and added that it required from forty-eight to seventy-two hours for conclusions of an absolutely trustworthy character to be reached. No physician, he said, pending such a period, would state absolutely final conclusions. The doctors were inspired by the sincerest effort to give the best judgment that medical science could render.
     As Senator Hanna and the Vice-President were leaving the house Robert T. Lincoln, son of President Lincoln, was chatting with Mr. Milburn in the hall. Mr. Lincoln soon came out and expressed a hopeful view of the situation.
     “My visit,” said he, “has given me great encouragement. I feel more hopeful now than I have at any time.”
     Mr. Lincoln reached Buffalo on Friday in a private car with his family and a number of friends. The attempted assassination of the President deeply moved him, and led him to postpone his departure.
     Senator Hanna returned to the Milburn house at 1:30 o’clock, and was there again at 5 o’clock. He was intensely interested in the sleep which the President took in the afternoon. He almost beamed as he left the house, shortly after 5 o’clock.
     “Now, young men,” said he, “I want to be conservative. Get me straight. If the present conditions continue for the next twenty-four hours the surgeons will be able to give us news as satisfactory as we could wish. So far as any human agency can predict, this state of affairs will be brought about. The four restful hours of sleep the President had to-day is evidence of his almost normal condition. His mind is clear and his condition is most hopeful.”

GRATIFICATION EVERYWHERE.

     An aged man wearing a Civil War veteran’s button, accompanied by his wife, walked out from the New-York Central Station after an all night ride from the West.
     “I’ll know, Maggie,” said he, “jest as soon as I see the flag on the fust buildin’.”
     From a hotel flagpole floated the Stars and Stripes.
     “Bless the good God, Maggie,” he exclaimed, “there’s Old Glory! Look up, Maggie, look up—an’ she’s at full mast, too! He ain’t dead yet, Maggie; he ain’t dead yet,” sobbed the old man as he dropped his big satchel and sank on a horse block. A lad stopped running to see what was “doing,” and began to laugh. He was checked by a bystander, who told him what it all meant, and the little fellow turned red in the face and tiptoed away.
     On a Main-st. car were a young husband and wife and their little boy. They were discussing the uppermost topic. “Papa,” said the youngster suddenly, “don’t you think, if it didn’t hurt the President any, that Mrs. McKinley would be kind of glad he’s sick?” Seeing a frown coming, the boy continued: “You know, papa, Mrs. McKinley has been sick, and the President tended her; now, don’t you think, if it didn’t hurt him, she’d be glad he’s sick, so she could tend him?”
     “You’re a queer little Dick,” was all the youngster got from his father.
     At the Iroquois Hotel the bulletins from the sick room were posted up as fast as received. The lowering temperature was quickly noted, and laymen, who would find it difficult to tell the difference between rhubarb and arsenic without tasting, talked wisely about temperature, pulsation and respiration. A prosperous looking countryman heard a newsman shout The Tribune for sale in front of the Ellicott Square building. He passed the vender, hesitated, spoke to his wife, and then went back to the newsman. “Gimme a Try-bune, I never bought a Sunday paper before,” he said apologetically, “but I guess it won’t be laid up agin me to-day, seein’ as I want to know how the President is gettin’ on.” Soon the old couple were gazing at the picture of the President on the first page, and they forgot about the Exposition for at least ten minutes.

 

 


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