It was a dignified end.

There must have been a good deal of innate nobility in William McKinley.

With all his vacillation and infirmity of political purpose, he must have been a man whose mind was saturated with fine thoughts, for to the very last, in those hours of weakness when the will no longer sways and each word is the half-unconscious muttering of the true self, he shone forth with unexpected grandeur and died a hero.
Late in the evening a bulletin announced that when the message of death came the bells would toll.

In the midst of the night the city was roused by the solemn pealing of great bells, and from the streets below there came the sounds of flying horses, of moving feet, of cries and voices.

It seemed as if the city had been held in check and was now released to express itself in its own characteristic way.