The next Monday morning, after a simple funeral ceremony at the Milburn mansion, the remains were reverently borne to the Buffalo City Hall, where, till midnight, mourning columns filed past the catafalque. The body lay in state under the Capitol rotunda at Washington for a day, and was borne thence, hardly a moment out of hearing of solemn bells or out of sight of half-masted flags and dumb, mourning multitudes, to the old home at Canton, Ohio. Here the late Chief Magistrate's fellow-townsmen, his old army comrades, and other thousands joined the procession to the cemetery or tearfully lined the streets as it passed. [Illustration] Ascending the Capitol steps at Washington, D, C., where the casket lay in state in the Rotunda. On the day of the interment, September 19th, appropriate exercises, attended by enormous concourses of people, occurred all over the country, and even in foreign parts. In hardly an American town of size could a single building contain the crowd, overflow meetings being necessary, filling several churches or halls. Special commemorative services were held in Westminster Cathedral by King Edward's orders. No king was ever honored by obsequies so widespread or more sincere. Messages of condolence poured in upon the widow from the four quarters of the globe. Business was suspended. For five minutes telegraph clicks and cable flashes ceased, and for ten minutes, upon many lines of railway and street railway, every wheel stood still. None but the rash undertook, at once after his lamented decease, to assign President McKinley's name to its exact altitude on the roll of America's illustrious men. Ardent eulogists spoke of him as beside the nation's greatest statesman, Lincoln, while his most pronounced opponents in life accorded him very high honor. During his career he had been accused of opportunism, of inconsistency, of partiality to the moneyed interests of the country. His views of great public questions underwent change. One of his altered attitudes, much remarked upon, that concerning silver, involved, as pointed out in the last chapter, no change of essential principle. In regard to protection he at last swung to Blaine's position favoring reciprocity, which, as author of the McKinley Bill, he had been understood to oppose; but it should be remembered that his final utterances on the subject contemplated an industrial situation very different from that prevalent during his early years in politics. The United States had become a mighty exporter of manufactured products, competing effectively with England, Germany, and France in the sale of such everywhere in the world.