The clerk of the weather seemed to have been storing his rain for weeks in order to let it all out upon Harrison’s inauguration, and the street pageant was a drenched and draggled affair. The civilities of the outgoing to the incoming President gave the day its one touch of cheerfulness. Cleveland sat on the rear seat of the open landau which bore them to the Capitol, the front seat being occupied by Senators Hoar and Cockrell, acting as a committee of escort. In order to enable Harrison to lift his hat to the people who cheered him from the sidewalk, Cleveland raised his own umbrella and held it over his companion. When Cockrell undertook to do the same for Hoar, his umbrella broke. Cleveland at once borrowed an umbrella of his Secretary of the Treasury in the next carriage, and, when Mr. Hoar demurred, reassured him with a laugh: “Don’t be alarmed, Senator; we’re honest, and I’ll see that it gets back!” As they drove down the Avenue, most of the applause, naturally, was for the President-elect; but once in a while a spectator would shout, “Good-by, Grover!” or something of the sort, and Cleveland would return the greeting with a smile and a nod. So much kindly feeling was manifested throughout the morning that Harrison, who was temperamentally the least effusive of men, was deeply touched; and he could not forbear referring in his inaugural address to the courtesy he had received at Cleveland’s hands, adding that he should endeavor to show like consideration to his successor four years later.
And four years later Providence gave him the chance, which he improved as far as in him lay. In the meantime he had passed through many sad experiences. Factional divisions, almost as serious as those that culminated in the assassination of Garfield, had broken up his party. His Secretary of State, Mr. Blaine, had parted company with him on the eve of the meeting of the Republican National Convention of 1892, become his rival for the Presidential nomination, and died the following winter. Two of Blaine’s sons and one of his daughters had already died. Mr. Windom, Secretary of the Treasury, had fallen dead at a public banquet, just after finishing a memorable speech in defense of the administration. General Tracy, Secretary of the Navy, had lost his wife and daughter in a fire which destroyed their Washington home. The wife of the President’s secretary, Mr. Halford, had died; and to crown his load of sorrows, Mr. Harrison lost his own wife and her father almost at the time of his defeat for reëlection.