CHAPTER IX 



Reformer and Peacemaker 



44 y^^IT-THAR ROOSEVELT" is a familiar cowboy designation 

 I T" of our late President, and it is one that well fits. All his 

 life he has been "gittin' thar." Ability and impetuosity 

 have carried him headlong forward from one position to another in the 

 public service, his rare vacations from political labor being those of 

 his ranch and hunting life in the Wild West, and of his active career 

 as a soldier. These were his recreations, his intervals of holiday 

 enjoyment. As for resting — the man cannot do it ; it is not in him. 



He has got the posts he wanted throughout his life; and got one 

 post he did not want, that of Vice-President. It is one that would 

 appeal to the ambition of most of us, but it was a restful post, and 

 Roosevelt was not hankering after rest. Yet by a strange dispensa- 

 tion of Providence it lifted him to the very summit of an American 

 political career; it made him President. 



He would not have been human if he had not felt a sense of 

 triumph over those plotting politicians who had fairly forced him into 

 the Vice-Presidential office, fancying in their shrewd souls that they 

 had the inconvenient reformer shelved. Fate had broken the threads 

 which bound down this modern Gulliver and set him free to carry his 

 ideas to their highest ultimate. 



Yet that he was satisfied cannot be said. It was a bitter and 

 sorrowful reflection that he had reached this high office over the slain 

 body of his lamented predecessor, the loved and lovable McKinley. 

 He would ten thousand times rather have spent his four years as 

 voiceless chairman of the Senate than to be made President through 

 the assassination of a dear and cherished friend. 



Nor was it altogether pleasant to feel that chance, not the act of 

 his fellow-citizens, had lifted him to this high office. Did they want 

 him? Was he not in some sense an interloper? That could only be 



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