CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 39 



Western cordiality and good-fellowship. Wherever 

 }iis train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or had al- 

 ready gathered, to welcome him. His advent made 

 a, holiday in each town he visited. At all the principal 

 stops the usual programme was: first, his reception 

 by the committee of citizens appointed to receive him, 



— they usually boarded his private car, and were one 

 by one introduced to him; then a drive through the 

 town with a concourse of carriages; then to the hall 

 or open air platform, where he spoke to the assembled 

 throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the 

 train, and off for the next stop — a round of hand- 

 shaking, carriage-driving, speech-making each day. 

 He usually spoke from eight to ten times every tw^enty- 

 four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes from 

 the rear platform of his private car, at others for an 

 hour or more in some large hall. In Chicago, Mil- 

 waukee, and St. Paul, elaborate banquets were given 

 him and his party, and on each occasion he delivered 

 a carefully prepared speech upon questions that in- 

 volved the policy of his administration. The throng 

 that greeted him in the vast Auditorium in Chicago 



— that rose and waved and waved again — was one 

 of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. 



In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke 

 that presently filled the large hall after the feasting 

 was over was enough to choke any speaker, but it did 

 not seem to choke the President, though he does not 

 use tobacco in anv form himself; nor was there any- 

 thing foggy about his utterances on that occasion upon 

 legislative control of the trusts. 



In St. Paul the city w^as inundated w^ith humanity, 



— a vast human tide that left the middle of the streets 



