CHAPTER SIXTEEN ANARCHISM.
"BULLETINS FROM THE CHAMBER OF DEATH" During these days the President was dying in Buffalo, though the country did not know it until Friday.
Wednesday and Thursday the reports were so assuring that all danger seemed past; but, as it turned out afterwards, there was not a moment from the hour of the shooting when the fatal processes of dissolution were not going on.

Not only did the resources of surgery and medicine fail most miserably, but their gifted prophets were unable to foretell the end.

Bulletins of the most reassuring character turned out absolutely false.

After it was all over, there was a great deal of explanation how it occurred and that it was inevitable from the beginning; but the public did not, and does not, understand how the learned doctors could have been so mistaken Wednesday and so wise Friday; and yet the explanation is simple,--medicine is an art and surgery far from an exact science.

No one so well as the doctors knows how impossible it is to predict anything with any degree of assurance; how uncertain the outcome of simple troubles and wounds to say nothing of serious; how much nature will do if left to herself, how obstinate she often proves when all the skill of man is brought to her assistance.
On Friday evening, and far into the night, Herald Square was filled with a surging throng watching the bulletins from the chamber of death.