City’s Dress of Mourning

Scarcely a Store That Is Not Draped in Black
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FOR THE NATION’S LOSS
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Pictures of the Martyred McKinley Are Numerous All Over the City.

     Toledo’s dress of mourning is complete. A great majority of the business houses of the city, as well as many of the residences in all parts of the city, by sombre drapings have been bade to bear mute testimony of the city’s respect and its sorrow in the death of the nation’s president.
     Never before in the history of the city has public sentiment been so universally expressed by the draping of its buildings. In the hearts of the people of the north the martyred president was second only to Lincoln, in the hearts of all the people his memory will hold a place all its own.
     A tour along Summit street, through Madison and along Adams, Jefferson and Monroe last evening was well worth the uncomfortableness of straggling through the night’s drizzle. No turn could be made but what the almost universal sorrow was expressed in some way.
     Not satisfied with draping their buildings in great streamers of black, rosetting the windows in the same sombre hue, and festooning the doorways, some of the retail houses took great pains in arranging display windows especiall [sic] in view of the national tragedy. One picture which was greatly admired represented Columbia robed in the flag of the nation, pointing with tear-dimmed eyes to the picture of the late president, in a wide, deep setting of black.
     Draped pictures of the president were everywhere—the store without a display of some kind was the exception. From the window of the city’s chief executive’s office looked down the martyred president. Great placards were everywhere in evidence. “We Mourn the Loss of Our Departed President” was a sentence showing from a hundred business house windows.
     Even the street fakir with his ever fruitful ideas, took advantage of the sentiment of the public and disposed of thousands of mourning buttons of home manufacture, being old campaign buttons on a background of black.
     The usual Saturday night rush of trade and commerce was comparatively hushed—the public had not yet regained its self-composure. It was an unusual Saturday night. Streets were deserted quickly. Stores were closed early. The silence of death was in the air.