CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 



At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park 

 with President Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I pro- 

 mised some friends to wTite up my impressions of the 

 President and of the Park, but I have been slow in 

 getting around to it. The President himself, having 

 the absolute leisure and peace of the White House, 

 wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago! 

 But with the stress and strain of my life at " Slabsides," 

 — administering the affairs of so many of the wild 

 creatures of the woods about me, — I have not till 

 this blessed season found the time to put on record 

 an account of the most interesting thing I saw in that 

 wonderful land, which, of course, was the President 

 himself. 



When I accepted his invitation I was well aware 

 that during the journey I should be in a storm centre 

 ^ost of the time, which is not always a pleasant })ros- 

 pect to a man of my habits and disposition. The Pre- 

 sident himself is a good deal of a storm, — a man of 

 such abounding energy and ceaseless activity that 

 he sets everything in motion around him w^herever 

 he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied 

 on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs 

 and in receiving personal and political homage in the 

 towns and cities we were to pass through. But when 

 all this was over, and I found myself with him in the 

 wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent 

 and a few attendants to help take up his tremendous 



