The Week [excerpt]

     President McKinley Assassinated.—While holding a reception in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American, September 6, President McKinley was shot twice, first in the breast and then in the abdomen. The shooting occurred a few minutes after 4 p. m., and was done by a Russian Pole anarchist, named Leon Czolgosz, who carried the revolver concealed beneath a handkerchief bandage around his right hand. He took the President’s outstretched hand with his own left one, at the same time firing his weapon at the President through the bandage on his right hand. The President was immediately removed to the emergency hospital on the exposition grounds. The first bullet struck the right breast bone and glanced. This was immediately extracted, the wound not being serious. But the second bullet entered the abdomen five inches below the left nipple, and one and one-half inches to the left of the middle, passed through the stomach, where trace of it was lost, but it is thought to be lodged in the muscles of the back. The holes in the stomach were sewed up and no further attempt made to locate the bullet for fear that the shock of the operation would be too great. The President was removed in the evening to the residence of Mr. Milburn, president of the Exposition company. By Saturday afternoon the President’s temperature had risen to 104, and his pulse to 134, but by Sunday morning there was a decided improvement which continued until now (Monday morning) the danger of peritonitis is very nearly past and the chances for recovery are good, unless blood-poisoning should set in. An X-ray machine is ready for use to locate the bullet, should the slightest inflammation appear in the region of the bullet, but it is thought best not to tax the patient’s strength by removal of the bullet, so long as his vitality is needed to ward off peritonitis. The assassin is an American-born Russian Pole, about thirty years old; he was born in Alpena, Mich., but has for several years called Cleveland his home, where his people live, and where he imbibed anarchist doctrines from the speeches of Emma Goldman during the past two or three years. It was at first thought that there was a plot, and that to Czolgosz was allotted the commission of this low-lived diabolical crime, but the assassin himself asserts that he alone is responsible for the plan, and the feeling is gaining ground that he tells the truth, although anarchist teachings are back of his dastardly inspiration. He is described by those who know him as a lazy, cowardly, easily led young man of mediocre intellect. Expressions of horror and sympathy have poured in from all over the world, and amazement and indignation at such an absolutely uncalled for crime is the universal feeling.