was reëlected by a plurality of 60,000. The whole Republican state ticket was also elected as well as a safe majority in both Houses of the Legislature—thus assuring Mr. Foraker a second term in the Senate.

During the summer a very good-looking and gay little exposition was being held in Buffalo for the sake ostensibly of celebrating the great fact or cause of Pan-Americanism. President McKinley had been scheduled to pay Buffalo a visit early in September, and he decided to take the opportunity of making a speech which would outline the future policy of the administration. The recent increase in the American exports of manufactured goods had convinced him that the country should enter upon a more liberal commercial policy one which would promote exports from this country by allowing other countries increasing opportunities of trading in the markets of the United States. According to his usual habit he carefully prepared a speech along the foregoing lines; and just before going to Buffalo he met Mr. Hanna by appointment and they discussed fully the text of the proposed address. The speech was delivered on September 5, and was received with an outburst of approval from practically the entire country.

About four o'clock on the afternoon of the following day, during a popular reception held in one of the Exposition buildings, President McKinley was shot by a demented anarchist. The wound was serious, and all of Mr. McKinley's friends and official family hurried to Buffalo. Among them was Mr. Hanna. There was, of course, nothing to do but wait; and it looked, in the beginning, as if the waiting would not be in vain. The wounded man appeared to be recovering. After several days of apparently uninterrupted progress on the part of the patient, the group of secretaries and friends assembled in Buffalo began to disperse. Mr. Hanna finally decided that he himself could risk a brief absence. The national encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic was being held in Cleveland during the coming week. His attendance had been promised. He wanted to keep his engagement, because he had just been elected a member of the organization, and a political leader always desires to stand well with the Grand Army.

After making up his mind to risk a short absence, he went to the doctors in attendance on the President, and told them that he was going over to Cleveland to keep an engagement with the Grand Army. He asked them for their very best judgment as to Mr. McKinley's condition so that he could give to his audience absolutely authentic news about their President's and comrade's chances of life. The doctors authorized him to say that Mr. McKinley had passed the critical point of his illness and would live. So he went to Cleveland with a light heart and made his speech, part of which has already been quoted in another connection. Before going on the platform he received by telegraph from the President's secretary, Mr. Cortelyou, a final confirmation of the news-which was announced to the audience and which was received with the liveliest expressions of relief and joy. Few Presidents of the United States have been more sincerely and generally liked than was Mr. McKinley. A committee of Cleveland citizens was formed, which organized and held a meeting of thanksgiving for the President's promised recovery.

That same night, however, Mr. Hanna, who had been exhausted by the strain and fatigues of the last week, was awakened at 2 A. M. by a message from Buffalo that Mr. McKinley's condition had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. By four o'clock he was on his way back to Buffalo in a special train, and when he reached there he found the President's condition actually critical. On the evening of that same day, when the doctors realized that death was a matter only of a few hours, a number of relatives and friends, who were waiting in Mr. John G. Milburn's house, were allowed to have a last look at the dying man. First Mrs. McKinley was shown in, then Abner Mc Kinley, Justice Day and Mr. Hanna. The President was unconscious and barely alive. On no other occasion during the illness was Mr. Hanna allowed to see him. Some days before, the President had inquired: "Is Mark there?" and had been told of his friend's attendance but of the impossibility of any interview. Mr. Hanna was very much touched by this evidence of the sufferer's interest. Although a self-contained man, he utterly broke down after his visit to the sick room and cried like a child.

With almost a dozen other relatives and friends, Mr. Hanna waited in the Milburn library from seven o'clock in the evening until the President's death was announced, almost seven hours later. Early in the night he called to him his secretary, Mr. Dover, Colonel Myron T. Herrick and one or two others, and discussed with them the necessary arrangements for the care and transportation of the body and the funeral. The different parts of the work were divided up among the different members of the party, the necessary coöperation of the railroad officials secured, and all the other details planned. Under such circumstances any action was a relief, and even such painful preparations diminished the distress of the dreadful suspense. About 2 A.M. Mr. Cortelyou announced to the group that death had finally come. Not a word was spoken. They all left the room silently and soon afterwards the house.

The next morning Mr. Hanna arose early, and drove down to the business section of the city. There he interviewed the railroad company's officers, and attended to his share of the necessary arrangements. While returning from the undertaker's he passed the house of Mr. Ansley Wilcox, and noticed in its immediate vicinity an unusual commotion. A number of soldiers, policemen, attendants and by-standers were gathered around the entrance. Suddenly he realized that Mr. Roosevelt had been staying in the house, and that the new President must have been taking the oath of office. Mr. Hanna decided to call. As soon as his presence was announced Mr. Roosevelt invited him in and repeated to him the promise of future policy and behavior which had just been made to the members of the Cabinet. The new President, realizing that he had been elected under the shadow of the dead man, had declared that he proposed to continue unbroken his predecessor's policy and Cabinet. What followed can best be narrated in Mr. Roosevelt's own words.

"In the evening Senator Hanna by arrangement came to call. The dead man had been his closest friend as well as the political leader whom he idolized and whose right hand he himself was. He had been occupying a position of power and influence, because of his joint relationship to the President and Senate, such as no other man in our history whom I can recall ever occupied.

"He had never been very close to me, although of course we had worked heartily together when I was a candidate for VicePresident and he was managing the campaign. But we had never been closely associated, and I do not think that he had at that time felt particularly drawn to me.

"The situation was one in which any small man, any man to whom petty motives appealed, would have been sure to do something which would tend to bring about just such a rift as had always divided from the party leaders in Congress any man coming to the Presidency as I came to it. But Senator Hanna had not a single small trait in his nature. As soon as he called on me, without any beating about the bush, he told me that he had come to say that he would do all in his power to make my administration a success, and that, subject, of course, to my acting as my past career and my words that afternoon gave him the right to expect, he would in all ways endeavor to strengthen and uphold my hands. There was not in his speech a particle of subserviency, no worship of the rising On the contrary, he stated that he wished me to understand that he was in no sense committing himself to favor my nomination when the next Presidential election came on; for that was something the future must decide; but that he would do all he could to make my administration a success and that his own counsel and support within and without the Senate should be mine in the effort to carry out the policies which had been so well begun. I, of course, thanked him and told him that I understood his position perfectly and was grateful for what he had said.

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"He made his words good. There were points on which we afterwards differed; but he never permitted himself, as many men even of great strength and high character do permit themselves, to allow his personal disapproval of some one point of the President's policy to lead him into trying to avenge himself by seeking to bring the whole policy to naught. Any one who has had experience in politics knows what a common failing this is. The fact that Senator Hanna never showed the slightest trace of it, and never treated his disagreement with me on some difficult point as any reason for withholding his hearty support on other points, is something which I shall not soon forget.

"Throughout my term as President, until the time of his death, I was in very close relations with him. He was continually at the White House and I frequently went over to breakfast and dinner at his house; while there was no important feature of any of my policies which I did not carefully discuss with him. In the great majority of instances we were able to come to an agreement. I always found that together with his ruggedness, his fearlessness and efficiency he combined entire straightforwardness of character. I never needed to be in doubt as to whether he would carry through a fight or in any way go back on his word. He was emphatically a big man of strong aggressive generous nature."

Because of Mr. Roosevelt's fine pledge to continue the policy of his predecessor, the death of Mr. McKinley and the accession of a new President made at the moment a smaller alteration in the political situation than might have been anticipated. But there remained the terrible wound dealt to Mr. Hanna's personal feelings by the loss of his friend. The strength of his attachment to Mr. McKinley received a striking testimonial, when after his visit to the dying man, he broke down and burst into tears. He was a man of intense feelings, which were rarely, if ever, betrayed in public. Indeed, it seemed almost like a point of honor with him, as with so many men of strong will, not to permit any outward expression of his personal affections. After long separation from relatives, to whom he was and had shown himself to be devotedly attached, he would after their return greet them in a very casual way or not greet them at all. He shrank instinctively from revealing his affections in the ordinary way, not because he was callous or indifferent, but because, perhaps, they were so lively that he could not risk their expression in words. He allowed his actions to speak for him.

His attachment to Mr. McKinley was peculiarly deep and strong, because it was compounded, as Mr. Roosevelt has suggested above, of two elements-each of which was fundamental in his disposition. He had in the first place a veritable gift for friendship. His personal relations with other men constituted the very core and substance of his life. He had served Mr. McKinley, as he had served so many others, because of