Florida Day [excerpt]

An address of welcome was given with much cordiality by Director-General William E. Buchanan. He welcomed the Governor of Florida with special interest, he said, as one among the first of the State executives to personally pay a visit of sympathy to the wounded President.
     Governor Jennings responded in an address of much feeling, and then presented the best array of facts and agricultural statistics concerning the State of Florida to which we ever listened. It was a strong paper, and a universal desire prevailed for its publication and distrubution [sic]. As the Governor stood on the little platform, under the beautiful drapery of the Illinois Building, with the members of his staff around him it presented a very graceful picture.
     Seated at the end of the sofa was little Bryan Jennings, who applauded his father’s closing eulogy of McKinley as heartily as any of the enthusiastic sons of Ohio and Illinois.

[omit]

     Something of a sensation was created by Mr. T. M. Weir, Florida Commissioner, declaring in his closing address that if the President’s assassin had attempted his deed in Florida, he would not have known the next morn- of the earth” [sic] so quick that people would not have known the next morning what he had for breakfast, what his pedigree was, or even had time to spell his name (Czolgosz).

[omit]

     P. S.—Dear Friend Trice: This very meagre sketch of “Florida Day” exercises is written under difficulties.
     It is now the morning (Saturday) of the announcement of the death of the President. I am seated alone on the terrace of the great esplanade, facing the electric tower, the mammoth buildings and the most beautiful water way of fountain jets and statuary in the world.
     The now famed “Temple of Music[”] is within twenty-five feet of me as [I?] write, while two American Indians (real ones) sit on the steps and I am scribbling on the arm of a bench.
     From where I now sit I can look in through the window to the very spot where the President was shot. (He stood on the main floor, just to the right of the organ.)
     But what a transformation scene from yesterday  *  *  *  Last night I saw 50,000 or 75,000 people passing like [a?] flowing tide through this great cour[t?] of honor and magnifcense [sic]. To-day [I?] scarcely see one. Even the exposition guards are gone or invisible.
     The lights are out, the fountains are stopped, and the scene is that of deserted magnificence.
     Where the hum of tens of thousands of voices was heard yesterday, silence now reigns supreme. Even the flags on the apparently neglected buildings droop and flutter at half-mast.
     Only from the great Temple of Music does any sound come. The building itself is a poem in architecture and from the great organ within there now comes the solemn strains of almost a funeral dirge. The notes of the organ, now playing, were the last heard by President McKinley until he himself repeated the lines of the hymn last night, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” He was shot standing near the organ.)
     As I conclude, a full regiment of soldiers just passed me, powerless [in?] their strength, and I will follow them now to where the dead President [lies?].