We were in a state of profound peace.  No wars nor rumors of war disturbed the humble mind, and the blow was utterly unexpected and inexplicable.

The explanation came soon enough.  It was the work of a wretched political adventurer, who, inflated by an overweening estimate of his own abilities and importance, had made a preposterous claim to two high political offices—­the post of Minister to Austria, and Consul to Paris—­and receiving no encouragement in either direction, had deliberately made up his mind to “remove” the President, as he termed it, in the foolish hope that his chances of gaining office would be better under another administration.

My youngest readers will remember the sad excitement of that eventful day.  They will remember, also, how the public hopes strengthened or weakened with the varying bulletins of each day during the protracted sickness of the nation’s head.  They will not need to be reminded how intense was the anxiety everywhere manifested, without regard to party or section, for the recovery of the suffering ruler.  And they will surely remember the imposing demonstrations of sorrow when the end was announced.  Some of the warmest expressions of grief came from the South, who in this time of national calamity were at one with their brothers of the North.  And when, on the 26th of September, the last funeral rites were celebrated, and the body of the dead President was consigned to its last resting-place in the beautiful Lake View Cemetery, in sight of the pleasant lake on which his eyes rested as a boy, never before had there been such imposing demonstrations of grief in our cities and towns.

These were not confined to public buildings, and to the houses and warehouses of the rich, but the poorest families displayed their bit of crape.  Outside of a miserable shanty in Brooklyn was displayed a cheap print of the President, framed in black, with these words written below, “We mourn our loss.”  Even as I write, the insignia of grief are still to be seen in the tenement-house districts on the East Side of New York, and there seems a reluctance to remove them.

But not alone to our own country were confined the exhibitions of sympathy, and the anxious alternations of hope and fear.  There was scarcely a portion of the globe in which the hearts of the people were not deeply stirred by the daily bulletins that came from the sick couch of the patient sufferer.  Of the profound impression made in England I shall give a description, contributed to the New York Tribune by its London correspondent, Mr. G.W.  Smalley, only premising that the sympathy and grief were universal:  from the Queen, whose messages of tender, womanly sympathy will not soon be forgotten, to the humblest day-laborers in the country districts.  Never in England has such grief been exhibited at the sickness and death of a foreign ruler, and the remembrance of it will draw yet closer together, for all time to come, the two great sections of the English-speaking tongue.  Were it not a subject of such general interest, I should apologize for the space I propose to give to England’s mourning: