As the little group stood in silence about his bed, they recalled his words to Colonel Knox only a few days before, when warned of the danger that might be lurking in hidden corners. "I must come and go as usual," he said; "I cannot surround myself with a body-guard. _If the good of this country, the interests of pure government and of the people against one-man power, demand the sacrifice of my life, I think I am ready._" The arrival of Mrs. Garfield from Long Branch was anxiously awaited all through that long, weary afternoon. An accident to the engine delayed the train upon which she had started, and it was evening before she reached the White House. The President's quick ears heard the carriage-wheels as they rolled over the gravel driveway, and with a bright smile, he exclaimed,-- "That's my wife! God bless the little woman!" Then the strong-will power that had kept him up to this moment, seemed suddenly to give way. His attendants thought he was dying, and for hours his life hung upon the merest thread. Slowly, but surely, the tide began to turn. At midnight he was still conscious--the doctors thought there was "one chance" that he might recover--the President had bravely taken that one chance; and with lightning speed the good news was telegraphed all over the country. Sunday morning the President was so much better that he wanted to know what had been said about the assassination--and what was the general feeling throughout the country. "The country," replied Colonel Rockwell, "is full of sympathy for you. We will save all the papers so that you can see them when you get well; but you must not talk now." The President smiled, and in the broken slumber that followed he murmured to himself,-- "The great heart of the people will not let the old soldier die!" The next night was one of fearful suspense, and the dawn of Independence Day was ushered in with mingled feelings of hope and fear. A few days later, George William Curtis wrote as follows:-- "No Fourth of July in our history was ever so mournful as that which has just passed. In 1826 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on Independence Day. But the singular and beautiful coincidence was not known for some time, and then it was felt to be a fitting and memorable end of the life of venerable patriots long withdrawn from public affairs. Nearly forty years later, 1863, there was intense and universal anxiety when the great day dawned. Mr. Greeley, in his history, calls the ten days preceding the Fourth of July in that year the very darkest days the republic ever saw. But that was during the angry fury of civil war, when passions and emotions of every kind were inflamed to the utmost. There was fiery party rancor in the feeling of that time, and the whole year was full of similar excitement.