William McKinley, by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

William McKinley, Twenty-Fifth President of the United States, (1897-1901; 1901-1901). Born Niles, Trumbell County, Ohio, January 29, 1843; died Buffalo, N. Y., September 14, 1901. The following is quoted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"Throughout our history, and indeed, throughout history generally, it has been given to only a few thrice-favored men, to take so marked a lead in the crisis faced by their several generations that thereafter, each stands as the embodiment of the triumphant effort of his generation. President McKinley was one of these men.*** It was given to President McKinley to take the foremost place in our political life at the time when our country was brought face to face with problems more momentous than any whose solution we have ever attempted, save only the Revolution and the Civil War; and it was under his leadership that the nation solved those mighty problems aright. Therefore he shall stand in the eyes of history not merely as the first man on his generation, but was among the great figures of our public life, coming second only to the men of the two great crises in which the Union was founded and preserved."***

"We can honor him but by the way we show in actual deed that we have taken to heart the lessons of his life. We must strive to achieve, each in the measure that he can, something of the qualities that made President McKinley a leader of men, a mighty power for good; his strength, his courage, his courtesy and dignity, his sense of justice, his ever-present kindliness and regard for the rights of others. He won greatness by meeting and solving the issues as they arose--not by shirking them--meeting them with wisdom, with the exercise of the most skilful and cautious judgment, but with fearless resolution when the time of the crisis came. He met each crisis on its own merits; he never sought excuse for shirking a task in the fact that it was different from the one he had expected to face. The long public career which opened when as a boy he carried a musket in the ranks and closed when as a man in the prime of his intellectual strength, he stood among the world's chief statesmen, came to what it was because he treated each triummph as opening the road to fresh effort, not as an excuse for ceasing from effort. He undertook mighty tasks. Some of these he finished completely; others we must finish; and there remain yet others which he did not have to face, but which if we are worthy to be the inheritors of his principles, we will in our turn face with the same resolution, the same sanity, the same unfaltering belief in the greatness of his country, and unfaltering championship of the rights of each and all of our people which marked his high and splendid career."--THEODORE ROOSEVELT