Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a
happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest premonition
of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant.
One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching
peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless,
doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave.
Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes,
its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And
he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned
and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,
but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not
less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he
looked into his open grave.
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