Page:The last chapter in the life of Guiteau (IA 101648406.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/7

 as to a dress parade. At the first step of the gallows he tripped, and said with a smile to Dr. Hicks, who caught his arm, "I stubbed my toe going to the gallows." And this was the man they expected would "weaken!" How little they knew him.

On the scaffold he stood erect, master of the ceremonies, prepared to conduct his last prayer meeting, assisted by Rev. Dr. Hicks. For twenty years this anomalous being had taken a real pleasure in prayer meetings, it was his privilege to be present at one more. He stood there and looked down into cold, unsympathetic faces, many of them present at a prayer meeting for the first time. But he knew that he was speaking to an audience beyond those dull ears, and that the echoes of his voice would be heard outside the limits of those stone walls which formed his horizon, and past that day's shadows. The clouds of tobacco smoke rolled up like incense from that sensation-seeking crowd; it is but charitable to hope that his prayers rose higher and with a more acceptable savor.

Dr. Hicks, visibly affected, commenced the services with a brief but fitting supplication "out of the depths;" he then held the Bible for the pinioned man to read, and Guiteau, "cool as an iceberg," as the New York Herald correspondent remarked, said, so distinctly that his voice filled the corridor and everyone heard him, "I will read a selection from the tenth chapter of Matthew," naming the verses. Then he opened on that motley audience with a Scripture lesson that they well might heed, commencing, "And fear not them that kill the body but are not able to kill the soul," continuing thence for fourteen verses. The New York Times correspondent says, "As he read the verses, sometimes looking on the book and sometimes upon the people before him, he seemed to lose sight of the gallows and declaimed the words with great earnestness and much dramatic effect." At that verse which seemed a most precious promise that he applied to himself, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it," he was eloquent. Then followed that remarkable prayer