Mrs. William M’Kinley the Woman, the Wife

     In breathless suspense, with tender love a nation waits at a sick man’s door.
     Within that darkened chamber the Chief Magistrate of a great people is facing death.
     And as the people ask “Who is gaining the victory?” they ask “How is Mrs. McKinley?” Will she bear up?
     Will she live through the strain and anxiety?
     Before this she has been the one to ask sympathy. She has alway [sic] been the comforted instead of the comforter.
     Now all that is changed and it is she, the frail invalid who is valiantly struggling to be brave. The strain is great and Mrs. McKinley is keeping up by hope, love and the stimulants imperatively ordered by her physician.
     To her he is not the President. To her he is not the Chief Magistrate of a great people. To her he is just the one man in the world who is her all and all. Her heart is wrung with just such bitter tears as the heart of the lowliest workman’s wife.
     She is just a woman, confiding, tender, weak and dependant [sic], and he the man of her heart.
     To her the pomp and glory of being the first lady of the land mean nothing. She is just a woman and a wife whose heart is breaking.
     Nothing could be more touching than the story of the President’s home life.
     Ever since the babe died who left them childless Mrs. McKinley has been an invalid. Her life has been bounded by the four walls of her sick room. It was to this life William McKinley bound himself with a loyalty and devotion truer than that of any knight of old.
     Nothing could allure him from his wife’s side.
     When public life offered him glory and special honors none could allure him from his sick wife.
     It was a matchless devotion and tenderness more faithful than that of a mother over a sick child, and that devotion and love more than once seemed almost to draw her back from the grave. His love and solicitude for the woman who bore his child has been one of sweet spots in a great man’s life.
     Weep with the wife you women who know what it is to love that gentle loving care, that strong arm that kept the world’s cruelties from you.
     Weep with her you maidens who know the comforts of a lover’s sympathetic heart beats [sic].
     Weep with her you women who have bowed your heads in grief when infidelity or the monster drink has taken from you the hand you were wont to caress.
     Weep with her you women who have watched at the bedside of a loved one when grim death hovered about the room.
     Weep with her, for she is just a woman holding by the slender thread of hope that life that means everything to her.
     To us he is our chief, our President, our power; to her he is just the man she loves. Pray with her.