From Canal Boy to President; Or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. GarfieldAlger, Horatio, Jr.
History
From Canal Boy to President; Or, the Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Garfield, James A. (James Abram), 1831-1881 -- Childhood and youth; Presidents -- United States -- Biography
"At Edinburgh it is the Lord Provost who orders the bells to be tolled
till two. At Glasgow the Town Council adjourns. At Stratford-on-Avon the
Mayor orders the flag to be hoisted at half-mast over the Town Hall, and
the blinds to be drawn, and invites the citizens to follow his example,
which they do; the bell at the Chapel of the Holy Cion tolling every
minute while the funeral is solemnized at Cleveland. At Leeds the bell
in the Town Hall is muffled and tolled, and the public meeting which the
United States Consul, Mr. Dockery, addresses, is under the presidency of
the acting Mayor. Mr. Dockery remarked that as compared with other great
towns, so few were the American residents in Leeds, that the great
exhibition of sympathy had utterly amazed him. The remark is natural,
but Mr. Dockery need not have been amazed. The whole population of Leeds
was American yesterday; and of all England. At Oxford the Town Council
voted an address to Mrs. Garfield. At the Plymouth Guildhall the maces,
the emblems of municipal authority, were covered with black At Dublin
the Lord Mayor proposed, and the Aldermen adopted, a resolution of
sympathy.
"In all the cathedral towns the cathedral authorities prescribed
services for the occasion. I omit, because I have no room for them,
scores of other accounts, not less significant and not less affecting.
They are all in one tone and one spirit. Wherever in England, yesterday,
two or three were gathered together, President Garfield's name was
heard. Privately and publicly, simply as between man and man, or
formally with the decorous solemnity and stately observance befitting
bodies which bear a relation to the Government, a tribute of honest
grief was offered to the President and his family, and of honest
sympathy to his country. Steeple spoke to steeple, distant cities
clasped hands. The State, the Church, the people of England were at one
together in their sorrow, and in their earnest wish to offer some sort
of comfort to their mourning brothers beyond the sea. You heard in every
mouth the old cry, 'Blood is thicker than water.' And the voice which is
perhaps best entitled to speak for the whole nation added, 'Yes, though
the water be a whole Atlantic Ocean.'"
In addition to these impressive demonstrations, the Archbishop of
Canterbury held a service and delivered an address in the church of St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, on Monday. Mr. Lowell had been invited, of
course, by the church wardens, and a pew reserved for him, but when he
reached the church with his party half his pew was occupied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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