The great heart of the President was still forever. The man who had confessed his God in childhood, bade farewell to earth with the words: “Thy will be done!” The man who had helped his parents and his brothers and his sisters, who had periled his life freely in the defense of his country, who had made an honorable name and given the blessing of a husband’s love to one good woman, the man who had never harmed a human being purposely, who had lived at peace with God and man almost for three-score years, had drifted across the bar. His heart had throbbed lightly, and was still. The varying pulse had ceased, and the calm eyes that had fronted life and death and destiny without ever flinching—this Man was dead. The head of a nation, the chief executive of eighty millions of people, the statesman who had guided his country so wisely and so well, had been thrust from earth by an assassin who had no cause of complaint, who had no wrongs to avenge, no advantage to secure, no benefit to hope. And into the silent room where all need for silence had passed, where footfalls need not be guided lightly, where bated breath were no more known, the night wind came through wide-flung windows, and touched the lips and brow and nerveless hands. And the sound of unchecked weeping waited for the dawn. CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF THE ASSASSIN. Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, was born of Polish parents, who resided in Cleveland at the time he committed the terrible crime. Twenty-six years of age, born in Detroit, of medium height, smooth-shaver, brown hair, and dressed like a workingman completes all the description necessary. After the shooting he made a confession, in which he told how he had followed the President from the time of the latter’s arrival at the exposition until the fatal shots were fired. All of this time, like a prowling wild beast, he sought the life of President McKinley. He received some education in the common schools of Detroit, but left school and went to work when a boy as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Later he went to work at Cleveland and then went to Chicago. While in Chicago he became interested in the Socialist movement. When he went back to Cleveland his interest in the movement increased. He read all the Socialist literature he could lay his hands on, and finally began to take part in Socialistic matters. In time he became well known among Anarchists in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, not only as a Socialist, but as an Anarchist of the most bitter type. After returning to Cleveland from Chicago he went to work in the wire mills in Newburg, a suburb of Cleveland. About two weeks previous to his fearful crime, Czolgosz attended a meeting of Socialists in Cleveland, at which a lecture was given by Emma Goldman, the woman whose anarchistic doctrines have made her notorious all over the country. The extermination of rulers of people is part of her creed.