Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/268

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

our dear friend and ruler was as deadly as blind hate could make it; but the blow struck at anarchy was deadlier still.

How many countries can join with us in the community of a kindred sorrow ! I will not speak of those distant regions where assassination en- ters into the daily life of government. But among the nations bound to us by the ties of familiar intercourse — who can forget that wise and mild autocrat who had earned the proud title of the liberator? that enlightened and mag- nanimous citizen whom France still mourns 1 that brave and chivalrous king of Italy who only lived for his people? and, saddest of all, that lovely and sorrowing empress, whose harmless life could hardly have excited the animosity of a demon? Against that devilish spirit nothing avails, — neither virtue nor patriotism, nor age nor youth, nor conscience nor pity. We can not even say that education is a sufficient safe- guard against this baleful evil, — for most of the wretches whose crimes have so shocked human- ity in recent years were men not unlettered, who have gone from the common schools, through murder to the scaffold.

The life of William IMcKinley was, from his birth to his death, typically American. There is no environment, I should say, anywhere else in the world which could produce just such a character. He was born into that way of life which elsewhere is called the middle class, but which in this country is so nearly universal as 230

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