Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/488

96 glance. This was only momentary. Each time it was more difficult to penetrate beneath the freezing flesh to the living soul. At two o'clock of the morning, Colonel Grant laid his hand on the dying man's forehead and said: "Father, would you like a drink of water?"

In reply, Grant whispered, "Yes."

At three o'clock Colonel Grant again approached the bedside: "Father, is there anything you want?"

"Water," whispered the dying man, and this was his last word.

He could not swallow; but when his wife placed a sponge in his mouth, he closed his lips upon it and seemed relieved by the trickling moisture.

All danger of a violent death was over. He was passing peacefully away, his face calm and unlined by pain. His body, wasted and grave-weary, composed itself for final rest. The coldness crept slowly but inexorably toward the faintly-beating heart. The birds sang outside, and the sun rose, warming the earth, but no waking and no warmth came to The Great Commander lying so small and weak beneath his coverlet.

At seven minutes past eight, in the full flush of a glorious morning, he drew a deeper breath, and then uttered a long, gentle sigh, like one suddenly relieved of a painful burden. In the hush which followed, the watchers waited for the next breath. It did not come. The doctor stole softly to the bedside, and listened; then rose and said in a low voice: "It is all over."

Ulysses Grant was dead.

The pomp and pageantry of the funeral which followed surpassed anything ever seen in America. The wail of bugle, the boom of cannon, the rataplan of drum, the tramp of columned men were all of martial suggestiveness—ceremony for which Grant cared little; but if his spirit was able to look back toward its outworn vesture, it must have been glad to see Joseph Johnston and Simon Buckner marching side by side with their old classmates, Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman. Over the body of Grant, the great warrior of peace, the North and the South clasped hands in a union never again to be broken. It is well that on the majestic marble mausoleum erected to cover his dust, on a wall looking to the South, these words should be carved: ; for they express, more completely than any other symbols could do, the inner gentleness and patriotism of the man.