REMARKS 
 
 JOS. B. CUMMING, 
 
 AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF 
 
 CITIZENS OF AUGUSTA 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF 
 
 THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY 
 
 Chrgnicle Job Print, 
 Augusta, Ga. 
 
I am entirely sincere when I say that I would have pre- 
 ferred to be among the many who are here to listen rather 
 than one of the few who are here to speak. I am occupying 
 that position against my preference, for the one reason that I 
 was requested to do so and I did not consider that it was 
 decorous in any one to withhold his contribution, however 
 slight, to this occasion. I cannot hope that anything I may 
 say can reach the average even of the magnificent fitting 
 things that are being said in similar gatherings all over this 
 stricken land. I cannot hope to add anything to what has al- 
 ready been so well said here this evening and the other fitting 
 things which will be said before the close of this occasion. 
 Indeed, I have felt inclined to ask myself why should I say 
 anything? Why should any one speak? “What can be said 
 better than silence is” in the presence of so great a calamity 
 as that which has brought us together? 
 
 No words that any mortal tongue may utter can bring 
 this great and good man back from the dead to the living. 
 Our words of sorrow, of esteem, of love, cannot follow him and 
 cheer him. They cannot even save the stricken wife a single 
 one of her flood of tears, or bring to her even one fair dream 
 when blessed sleep has let down a curtain between her and 
 her immeasurable sorrow. 
 
 If we were to stop to find reasons for speaking, surely 
 silence would descend upon us all. But we do not stop to 
 reason on such occasions. W e yield to sentiment, to impulse, 
 and surely it speaks well for a people that with extraordinary 
 unanimity, with one voice, under circumstances which exclude 
 the possibility of self-interest, or flattery of the great, or 
 adulation of the powerful, when in the nature of the case 
 there can be nothing but a genuine outpouring of their feelings 
 — it speaks well, I say, for a people under those circumstances 
 to make such demonstrations as we are making tonight. It 
 manifests convincingly that we are not, as a people, as is so 
 often said of us, given up wholly to the material interests of 
 life and devoid of sentiment. If I were obliged to give a 
 practical reason for such demonstrations, I can think of but 
 one, and by no means hopefully, of that one. I do not know 
 how the anarchist brain is constructed or what motives affect 
 the anarchist’s conduct. Tut it is barely possible that that 
 hideous monstrosity of this age may be impressed with what 
 is happening all over this land and indeed in all the world. 
 
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It may be that this grand chorus, without a single discordant 
 note going up from all the earth, may make even anarchists 
 have a sense of awful isolation, make them realize that they 
 are but a drop in the mighty ocean of humanity, and that their 
 crazy screeches are drowned in the mighty anthem of civiliza- 
 tion. Possibly it may make even them realize that they 
 occupy to humanity in general about the same relation as 
 spiders or rattlesnakes. A rattlesnake may perchance sink 
 his death-dealing fangs in the flesh of a great and good man. 
 A venomous spider even may sting to death a noble life. 
 Anarchists may compass similar achievements, but they may 
 be made to feel that equally with rattlesnakes and spiders 
 they are powerless to check or divert the course of civilization. 
 
 Of McKinley can be said tonight what cannot be spoken 
 of you or me or any of the living.. Hundreds of years ago it 
 was said by one of the wise ones of the earth, that no one 
 could be pronounced happy till the day of his death. \\ hat- 
 ever eminence a man may attain, however fondly fortune may 
 seem to smile on him, whatever blessings may attend him, 
 such are the reverses and vicissitudes of life, that up to its last 
 hour he is in danger of calamities that may make but dust and 
 ashes of all that has gone before. But the dead has passed 
 beyond that mortal peril. McKinley is happy; his great fame 
 is secure ; many, very many, pronounce him great ; all pro- 
 nounce him good, and now the record is made up and closed 
 and nothing can happen now henceforth forever to change the 
 judgment. He is happy. 
 
 My hearers, what we say and do tonight will be soon for- 
 gotten. The columns of tomorrow’s newspaper, which record 
 it, will be read and laid aside. The words spoken tonight, 
 however eloquent they may be, are thrown upon the air and 
 soon wafted beyond the sense of listening ears. We shall in 
 a little while break away from this assemblage and go the 
 one to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to his 
 office and all of us to the exactions of our busy lives — and 
 what we have said and done tonight will be overlaid by our 
 daily pursuits and forgotten. Shall we not do something 
 simply, but I believe appropriately, to preserve here in our 
 very midst, lasting memory of the great and good man? 
 Pardon me while I make a suggestion on this line. 
 
 I was not among those so fortunate as to see President 
 McKinley when he visited Augusta in December, 1898. I was 
 absent. You will recall that he did not come into our city by 
 rail. That was a marked epoch in our country's history, and 
 one of the unusual facts of the time was the encampment of 
 
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ten thousand soldiers of the army of the United States on the 
 thitherto peaceful hills west of the city. The President de- 
 scended from his luxurous special train at Wheless, and, ac- 
 companied by his brilliant retinue, drove to the top of the hill 
 and thence through lines of troops presenting arms along the 
 beautiful road which crosses that high and breezy plateau, 
 and so came into your city. IWhy not get the railroad authori- 
 ties to name the place of his descent from his train McKinley? 
 Why not erect there a simple but tasteful monument, record- 
 ing the fact and briefly stating the circumstances of its erec- 
 tion? Why not get your county authorities to designate that 
 un-named road as “ThePresident’s Road”, “The President’s 
 Avenue”, or even "The Road of Triumph”. 
 
 Thus simply but appropriately we would at the same time 
 ourselves honor this good man and preserve a local memory 
 for those who are to come after us. And I may say, in passing, 
 thus the older countries of the world are made more interesting 
 to the traveller. Speaking for myself and without conference 
 with any but one trusted friend, I should like to see a move- 
 ment to that end in this very meeting.” 
 
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 https://archive.org/details/remarksofjosbcumOOcumm