FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 55 



who owed nothing to the trappings of Courts. No 

 such glamour made a background for the per- 

 sonality of Mr Roosevelt, yet he was unmistakably 

 big — the biggest man in his country. Straight- 

 forward, abrupt yet sympathetic, the strong face 

 with the short-sighted eyes, the handshake that 

 meant it, the criticism of men and nations, his or 

 mine, that was outspoken without being unkind, all 

 this I could have foreseen before I met him in the 

 doorway and went with him to the inner room. By 

 circumstances and genius alike, a ruler of men ; by 

 inclination and physique, a backwoodsman, uniting 

 the strength of a leader with the nature-worship of 

 a Seminole, drawn equally by the magnetism of the 

 Capitol and the piping call of Pan, Mr Roosevelt's 

 dual nature makes itself felt even in a forty minutes' 

 chat. To have given up so much of a busy morn- 

 ing to receive an obscure tourist on the spring 

 migration was characteristic of the man — a rare act 

 of kindness, for my few remarks on an occasion 

 when I preferred to do the listening could not have 

 had the smallest interest for him who sat opposite. 

 The visit must have been out of his thoughts before 

 he sat down to lunch that afternoon, whereas, after 

 six months, I can recall every word he said, and I 

 shall probably carry the memory of that short inter- 

 view with me to life's end. Such vivid retrospect 

 is the solace of obscurity. 



The tenant of the White House has almost 

 erased every other memory of Washington. Dimly 

 I recall the splendour of the Congressional Library, 

 with its grandly-illuminated rotunda, smaller and 

 much brighter than ours, furnished with fewer 

 books, but, on the other hand, exacting no stupid 



