64 
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR 
When Colonel Roosevelt was reached and the news of the critical 
condition of the President told him he could scarcely credit it. Startled 
and alarmed, he hurried’ back to the Tahawas Club House, feeling that 
he must hasten to Buffalo with the utmost despatch. But the nearest 
railroad station was thirty-five miles distant, and this distance had to 
be covered by stage, over a road rendered heavy by a recent thunder¬ 
storm. 
When he reached there the Adirondack Stage Line had a coach 
in readiness and had provided relays of horses covering the whole 
distance. All night long the stage coach, bearing its distinguished 
passenger rolled along through the woods, the latter part of the jour¬ 
ney being through heavy forest timber, which rendered it one of 
actual peril. 
President McKinley had already passed away, though this news 
was not received until he reached the station at North Creek at 5.22 
on the following morning. A special train awaited him and dashed 
away the moment it received the awaited passenger. The trip that 
followed was a record-breaking one, the speed in many instances 
exceeding a mile a minute. It was 1.40 p. m. when it pulled into the 
station at Buffalo, the President, as Roosevelt now was, going to the 
house where his deceased predecessor lay. 
That afternoon he took the oath of office as President of the 
United States, the oath being administered by Judge Hazel, in the 
presence of Secretaries Root, Long, Hitchcock and Wilson, Attorney- 
General Knox and other distinguished persons. The oath taken and 
the document signed, all the preliminaries were finished, and Theodore 
Roosevelt became the legally authorized President of the United States. 
Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest man in the history of the 
country to become President of the United States; he had not yet 
completed his forty-third year. The youngest before him being Presi¬ 
dent Grant, who was forty-seven at the date of his first inauguration. 
The oldest was President Harrison, who took office at the age of 
sixty-eight. It was a heavy responsibility to fall on so young a man. 
How he would act in his new office was the anxious query asked by 
those who remembered the records of Presidents Tyler, Filmore and 
Johnson, who like him had begun as Vice-Presidents. President 
