Mr. Mackenzie, who had sent the telegram, was mortally angry that the
odium of actual defeat from which death had relieved his friend should
have been fixed thus upon his memory. He was offended almost beyond
endurance with his confidential clerk despite that young man’s violent
disclaimer of responsibility for the leak; but he was most enraged at
the diabolical discretion of the managing editor of _The Yellow_ in
omitting the name of the sender of the telegram: which would necessitate
that he admit having sent it before he could demand to know whence the
paper had knowledge of it.
The convention took a recess for ten days, and, upon reassembling after
Mr. Phillips’ burial, passed by a unanimous vote a set of resolutions
that lifted him to the stars and gave him place among the gods. Then it
set out upon a long round of balloting; and without being altogether
conscious of the reasons and causes impelling, it finally nominated a
"safe" man for President.
* * * * *
Helen could not attend her father’s funeral. Pitifully weakened by the
awful shock of his sudden passing, she cried out with all her remaining
strength to be carried in to look upon his face in death. Her
physician’s consent after long refusal was due to his kindliness of
heart, and the result vindicated his professional judgment, in that it
came frightfully near to taking her life.
In utter desolation of spirit was she left when they had taken the great
man out of the house upon his stately procession to Washington and the
grave. Her husband was unfailing in devoted and anxious attendance, but
she was listless to his tenderest efforts to console her. Elise’s
letters, coming now every day from the bedside of the prostrated mother,
Helen read faithfully to the last word, and really tried to take comfort
and courage from them, but they could not get down, it seemed, to touch
and dissolve the cold mists of desolation in the deeps of her heart.
Her father, the stay and fixative of her life, was gone: and there was
nothing now to give her footing upon the earth. No one to interpret
life, to give meaning to life, to give purpose to life, to give value to
life. The days might as well move backward as forward. They appeared not
to be moving at all. There was no one to give them direction. He
toward whom or from whom or about whom the days had always turned as a
sort of first cause or incarnation of the reason and sense of things,
was gone: and she was in chaos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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