From the Family Home to the Cemetery Where Warren Was Laid to Rest, Aug. 10, 1923

Bathed in Tears of Home Town Friends, Warren Is Sleeping His Final Rest. . . Former President’s Funeral Services Characterized by Simplicity. . . Many Attend. . . Presidential Train Brings the Government to Marion for Final Ceremony. . . Ivy Wrapped Vault. . . Favorite Hymns Are Once Again Sung by Voices Harding Once Could Hear—Mrs. Harding Views Her Loved One After the Last Prayer—Old Companions Mourn Their Loss

By the Associated Press

Marion, O., Aug. 10—Harding of Ohio is home tonight: sleeping time away near the mother at whose knee his first childish dream of greatness was prattled.

Before his tomb, as the chiming voices of the choir sang softly among the trees “Near, My God to Thee,” another tender, brave woman stood with aching heart, her veiled face lifted to the sky. A moment later she stepped a meagre moment into the dim vault where the dead husband’s journey of life had ended. Then she turned away, brave to the last, to face the lonely years ahead. She waited not to see the iron gates close softly upon her dead.

Harding is home forever from life’s high places where the heady winds of ambition blow; home beneath Ohio soil, for above him the vaulted roof is mantled with grass-grown sod; home among the friends and neighbors of his youth, the kindly people of a kindly town. There is ended for him, and the shouting and clamor that surrounds the great, is done.

It was a long road to that silent vault about which there clod tonight a guard of the citizen soldiery of his own state. There was endless ceremony of the nation’s and the peoples’ making to mark the way. But it ended simply, calmly, and as the dead would have had it end.

Aside from the multitude that walled the long way from his father’s home to the vault and those others closed packed to make a living settling for the funeral rites, there was not much to mark it as the burial of one who had held highest power in his grasp. There were the tenned men of his guard from the sister services of the nation, the admirals and the generals who formed his honor escort, the friend and comrade, who now is President in his stead, the colleagues of his grief-stricken cabinet. That was all, except at the last, distance gunfire as he came to his tomb and the soft tones of a bugle sounding a soldier requiem as the gates were closed.

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In cars behind the simple hearse that carried this honored leader, came President Coolidge, the cabinet, and the friends and the close kin. There, too, came Chief Justice Taft and General Pershing. Last to leave the memoried house was Mrs. Harding in black with veil drawn close, and just ahead of her walked the old father, his face plainly showing the agony of his grief. Through the silent, face-walled street, the cortege passed and around the corner to the quiet cemetery. As it came toward the gates the guns spoke afar in honor.

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From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Saturday, Aug. 11, 1923