THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



"Boys," he said to us, "what do you suppose she said to me? 

 Would you believe it? She said, 'I am very glad to know you, 

 Mr. Smith.' I am going back to Ithaca and tell my wife that 

 the finest lady in the world said that she was very glad to 

 know me!" 



I knew Garfield before he was President. I have told of meet- 

 ing him at President White's in Ithaca. He was then a Member 

 of Congress from Ohio. When I came to Washington I saw 

 him several times on the floor of the House and in the Con- 

 gressional Library, but was too bashful to speak to him. Colonel 

 and Mrs. Carter knew him very well, and he sometimes dropped 

 into their apartment in the evening, with his friend, Charles 

 Foster (at that time also a Member of Congress from Ohio and 

 afterwards Secretary of the Treasury), and I was frequently 

 called in for a hand at euchre. Later still, he lived at the corner 

 of Thirteenth and I, next door to Nelly McCauley's boarding 

 house, where I took my meals, and where the Garfields some- 

 times came for dinner. He was one of my great admirations, but 

 I was too bashful to talk to him, although he was a .most 

 approachable man. 



Of course my most vivid recollection of President Garfield 

 was when I saw Jules Guiteau shoot him in the old Pennsylvania 

 Railroad Station as I was starting on my first Western field trip. 

 But that I have told elsewhere. 



I saw very little of Presidents Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, 

 McKinley and Coolidge, and any statements of my impressions 

 of these men would not add to the interest of this story. 



Both from his political activities and from the fact that he was 

 a keen naturalist, Roosevelt had always appealed to my imagi- 

 nation and interested me gready. I had met him before his elec- 



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