[519]
alarmed at the threatening symptoms, thought it prudent to call in more medical aid and the assistance of such of the Senator's friends as were in the vicinity.
He awoke Mr. James Wormley, the well-known colored caterer, and Mr. Sumner's lifelong devoted friend.
Mr. Wormley informed the Hon. Samuel Hooper, who lives directly opposite Wormley's Hotel, and also the Hon. Henry L. Pierce, who is a guest at Wormley's.
Mr. Dana, in his New York
Sun, thus touchingly speaks of the feeling which pervaded
Washington:—
As Charles Sumner lay dying, the sorrow of an entire nation was seen in the air of affliction which pervaded the Federal city.
The breathless suspense which awaited the departure of his spirit was confined to no class.
If there was gloom in the Capitol there was mourning in the cabin.
Courtly Senators deplored a public calamity, and exchanged graceful tributes to the memory of a statesman; but the enfranchised slave bewailed a personal loss, and raised his unfettered hands to bless a benefactor.
All men who love justice and honor integrity, felt that justice and integrity were about to lose a well-tried, living exemplar.
Many, indeed, bemoaned it as a sad hour for Sumner to die in. They remembered his work, that it was done; but they remembered his soul, that it was pure, and they would have had it pass away unvexed by the licentious practices which at present prevail in the Government he lived to serve.
Men spoke softly on the street; their very voices betokened the impending event, and even their footfalls are said to have been lighter than common.
But in the neighborhood of the Senator's house there was a scene of singular and touching interest.
Splendid equipages rolled to the corner over pavements conceived in fraud and laid in corruption, to testify the regard of their occupants for eminent purity of life.
Liveried servants carried hopeless messages from the door of him who was simplicity itself, and to whom the pomp and pageantry of this evil day were but the evidences of guilty degeneracy.
Through all those lingering hours of anguish the sad procession came and went.
On the sidewalk stood a numerous and grateful representation of the race to whom he had given the proudest efforts and the best energies of his existence.
The black man bowed his head in unaffected grief, and the black woman sat hushing her babe upon the curbstone, in mute expectation of the last decisive intelligence from the chamber above.
