School Teacher Describes Scene After Shooting

Caught in Eddies of Maddened Crowd at Exposition

     Miss Sarah Fible, of the Normal School faculty, was at the Pan-American Exposition and in the vicinity of the Temple of Music on the afternoon of the attempted assassination.
     “I was talking to some people connected with the Indian Congress,” she said yesterday, “when we saw crowds of weeping men and pale, trembling women surge from the Temple of Music. Such genuine, whole-souled, universal grief I have never witnessed. It had taken a little while for the great multitude to realize the terrible happening. The report of a pistol in that great auditorium seemed more like the crack of a breaking chair, but once the terrible truth dawned upon them there came a mighty division of feeling in the crowd. Some wanted immediate revenge upon the miscreant and there were cries of ‘Lynch him!’ The others were silent with intense emotion and thought only of the stricken President and of one accord went out that the building might be vacant until such time as he would be removed.
     “When the crowd discovered that the would-be assassin was in a closed carriage being rapidly driven from the grounds it surged and yelled itself hoarse with fierce anger. Once the conveyance was stopped, but the guards drove back the attackers. Going over the Triumphal Bridge we were caught in a section of this angry multitude and trying to get out and away from the maddened tide of humanity was a fearful ordeal.
     “The beautiful system of illumination that has been the wonder and delight of all who have seen the new White City had began [sic] its trembling wave-like motion from the outlying points and was making its usual series of fairy-like pictures in light when it was stopped. Two slowly moving lights had just passed the Tower of Electricity. They were the huge lamps on the automobile ambulance, conveying the wounded chief to the Milburn residence. Suddenly the avenue, the entire vista, was in darkness save for those twin lights. In silent awe the people watched them slowly vanish.”