64 CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT 



determination the predaceous corporations and mone}^ 

 powers of the country. 



He unites the quahties of the man of action with 

 those of the scholar and WTiter, — another very rare 

 combination. He unites the instincts and accom- 

 phshments of the best breeding and culture with the 

 broadest democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is 

 as happy with a frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with 

 a fellow Harvard man, and Seth Bullock is happy, too. 



He unites great austerity with great good-nature. 

 He unites great sensibility with great force and will 

 power. He loves solitude, and he loves to be in the 

 thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled only 

 by his love of the ways and marts of men. 



He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, 

 if not on the planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and 

 every side throbs with his tremendous life and energy ; 

 the pressure is equal all around. His interests are as 

 keen in natural history as in economics, in literature 

 as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, 

 in preserving peace as in preparing for w^ar. And he 

 can turn all his great power into the new channel on 

 the instant. His interest in the whole of life, and in the 

 whole life of the nation, never flags for a moment. 

 His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs 

 or craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's 

 fields, that only need a rotation of crops. I once heard 

 him say that all he cared about being President was 

 just "the big work." 



During this tour through the West, lasting over two 

 months, he made nearly three hundred speeches; and 

 yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt told me he looked as 

 fresh and unworn as when he left home. 



