64 IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR 



When Colonel Roosevelt was reached and the news of the critical 

 condition of the President told him he could scarcely credit it. Startled 

 and alarmed, he hurried back to the Tahawas Club House, feeling that 

 he must hasten to Buffalo with the utmost despatch. But the nearest 

 railroad station was thirty-five miles distant, and this distance had to 

 be covered by stage, over a road rendered heavy by a recent thunder- 

 storm. 



When he reached there the Adirondack Stage Line had a coach 

 in readiness and had provided relays of horses covering the whole 

 distance. All night long the stage coach, bearing its distinguished 

 passenger rolled along through the woods, the latter part of the jour- 

 ney being through heavy forest timber, which rendered it one of 

 actual peril. 



President McKinley had already passed away, though this news 

 was not received until he reached the station at North Creek at 5.22 

 on the following morning. A special train awaited him and dashed 

 away the moment it received the awaited passenger. The trip that 

 followed was a record-breaking one, the speed in many instances 

 exceeding a mile a minute. It was 1.40 p. m. when it pulled into the 

 station at Buffalo, the President, as Roosevelt now was, going to the 

 house where his deceased predecessor lay. 



That afternoon he took the oath of office as President of the 

 United States, the oath being administered by Judge Hazel, in the 

 presence of Secretaries Root, Long, Hitchcock and Wilson, Attorney- 

 General Knox and other distinguished persons. The oath taken and 

 the document signed, all the preliminaries were finished, and Theodore 

 Roosevelt became the legally authorized President of the United States. 



Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest man in the history of the 

 country to become President of the United States; he had not yet 

 completed his forty-third year. The youngest before him being Presi- 

 dent Grant, who was forty-seven at the date of his first inauguration. 

 The oldest was President Harrison, who took office at the age of 

 sixty-eight. It was a heavy responsibility to fall on so young a man. 

 How he would act in his new office was the anxious query asked by 

 those who remembered the records of Presidents Tyler, Filmore and 

 Johnson, who like him had begun as Vice-Presidents. President 



