CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 63 



had to be done. The crowd, mostly sheep-herders and 

 small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, 

 afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. 

 Saying, ' Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk 

 around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I 

 wheeled and fetched him as heavy a blow on the chin- 

 point as I could strike. He went down like a steer 

 before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he 

 went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his 

 chest, disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then 

 ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him and put 

 him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this 

 incident in his "Ranch Life," but does not give the 

 details. It brings out his mettle very distinctly. 



He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his 

 political opponents at Albany, during his early career 

 as a member of the Assembly, to besmirch his char- 

 acter. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations 

 had become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap 

 for him, but he was not caught. His innate rectitude 

 and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has 

 saved him many times since. I do not think that in any 

 emergency he has to debate with himself long as to 

 the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind 

 of infallible instinct. His motives are so simple and 

 direct that he finds a straight and easy course where 

 another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder 

 and hesitate. 



The President unites in himself powers and qualities 

 that rarely go together. Thus, he has both physical 

 and moral courage in a degree rare in history. He can 

 stand calm and unflinching in the path of a charging 

 grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and 



