Leacraft fixed his eyes upon the President, and he was near enough to him to note his expression. President Roosevelt sat squarely facing the people--now crushing in with an irresistible impulse from the distributed masses before him. He seemed serious, at moments almost solemnly so, at others he turned to his companions with alacrity, and his face even smiled at some allusion or whispered comment. Again his eyes wandered dreamily--Leacraft thought sadly--to his notes, and then he moved restlessly and leaned forward, and even half rose, eagerly scanning the expectant faces. A jumping up of half a dozen men at the rear of the platform, a signal of a waved handkerchief, followed, and the band, stationed somewhere behind the distinguished occupants of the platform, began the Star Spangled Banner. Everyone not already standing rose, heads even uncovered, and the spirited strains seized by the concourse, were flung back in a torrent of vocality, that sounded like the far and near thunder of the ocean’s surges. It was overwhelming. As if before the spirit of the Nation, the living and the dead; those whose discarnate beings might seem rushing in upon them from the viewless depths of space, summoned again to the fields of their endeavor by the marshall air, hats were doffed in all directions, until scarcely a covered head among the men remained, and many eyes streamed with irrepressible tears. The note of a requiem, the prouder challenge of defiance, the lofty questioning of Hope, the loving clasp of fraternal patriotism, the aspirations of a race, solving “in the foremost files of time” the problem of the world’s political creed, seemed blended together, in the avalanche of sound. And it was maintained to the end, even the verses of the national anthem were well remembered, and that trying and unattainable high note, like the scream of the eagle, which closes the lips of most singers in dubious apathy, was now sustained. The President sang lustily, and then he stopped, his head bowed; he might have been in prayer. It was noticed by all and it almost seemed as if the music quailed and sank before the mystery of a man’s outpoured petition to his God.