 Garfield had long been anxious to escape hot , unhealthy Washington , and in early September the doctors agreed to move him to Elberon , where his wife had recovered earlier in the summer . He left the White House for the last time on September 5 , traveling in a specially cushioned railway car ; a spur line to the Franklyn Cottage , a seaside mansion given over to his use , was built in a night by volunteers . There , Garfield could see the ocean as officials and reporters maintained what became ( after an initial rally ) a death watch . Garfield 's personal secretary , Joe Stanley Brown , wrote 40 years later , " to this day I cannot hear the sound of the low slow roll of the Atlantic on the shore , the sound which filled my ears as I walked from my cottage to his bedside , without recalling again that ghastly tragedy . " 
