"Perhaps this is the last time I will address you from this rostrum. [Laughter and applause.] I don't mean to insinuate that I regard it as a probability, but I must admit it is a possibility. The decision lies with none of us here. It is a decision that lies with an all-wise Providence. . . . With whatever Providence may decree, I am abundantly satisfied." [Applause.]
Speaker Nicholas Longworth was addressing his House of Representatives a few minutes before its March 4 adjournment. He was rounding out his third term in the highest legislative office in the land. Smiling, benign, always the "good fellow" he was looking forward to December when the 72nd Congress would meet with neither party in clear-cut control. Well aware was he that Death, in the interval, might decide the Speakership.
With Congress gone and his friends scattered, "Nick" Longworth idled about deserted Washington. He picked up a cold. It grew worse. Feeling "utterly wretched" he decided to go down to sunny, sandy Aiken, S. C. to visit his good Washington friends Mr. & Mrs. James F. Curtis (no kin to the Vice President). Fortnight ago he arrived at their low, shrub-bowered home behind its stone wall. His cold got no better. It went into his chest. Early last week doctors were called in, and put the Speaker into bed as a pneumonia patient. The pneumonia was dread Type No. 4.
Next day Alice Roosevelt Longworth, his wife, was summoned by telegraph from Washington. A specialist arrived from Augusta. Five nurses went on duty. The Speaker was put into an oxygen tent. The Press rushed representatives to Aiken as his condition changed from "serious" to "dangerous," from "critical" to "hopeless."
At midmorning they stood outside the Curtis house intently watching a second-story window shade. The doctor had promised to raise it as a signal of the end. Everything was very still. A Negro boy was exercising polo ponies nearby. The air was sweet with spring. . . . Up, slowly up went the shade.
Once he had said he wanted to die with Beethoven's seventh symphony ringing in his ears. But pneumonia victims are in coma long before the end. Perhaps the last sound he heard was the mockingbirds singing in the April sunshine.
From New York to join their half-sister in her black hour hurried Archibald and Kermit Roosevelt. President Hoover sent Col. Campbell Blackshear Hodges, his chief military aide, to Aiken by air. Copper Tycoon Charles Clark offered his private car Errant to Mrs. Longworth. Mourning alone near his master was Charles Eicheoff, for 31 years the Speaker's valet, to whom belonged credit for the famed perfection of the Longworth attire.