sure her of the profound sympathy
of the two Houses of Congress for her deep personal affliction and
of their sincere condolence for the late national bereavement."

On the 27th of February, 1882, Mr. Blaine, in response to the
resolution of the two Houses, delivered an address, in the hall of
House of Representatives, on the life and character of President
Garfield, worthy of the occasion, of the distinguished audience
before him, and of his reputation as an orator. From the beginning
to the end it was elevated in tone, eloquent in the highest sense
of that word, and warm in expression of his affection for the friend
he eulogized. His delineation of Garfield as a soldier, an orator,
and a man, in all the relations of life, was without exaggeration,
but was tinged with his personal friendship and love. He described
him on the 2nd of July, the morning of his wounding, as a contented
and happy man, not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost
boyishly, happy. "Great in life, he was surpassingly great in
death." He pictured the long lingering illness that followed that
fatal wound, the patience of the sufferer, the unfaltering front
with which he faced death, and his simple resignation to the divine
decree. His peroration rose to the full measure of highest oratory.
It was as follows:

"As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned.
The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital
of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer
to the longer-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God
should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of
its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to
the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing
wonders; on its far sails, whitening in the morning light; on its
restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the
noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the
horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us
think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt
and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of
the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further
shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the
eternal morning."

Blaine