CHAPTER IX 
Reformer and Peacemaker 
££/^IT-THAR ROOSEVELT” is a familiar cowboy designation 
ll of our late President, and it is one that well fits. All his 
life he has been “gittin’ thar.” Ability and impetuosity 
have carried him headlong forward from one position to another in the 
public service, his rare vacations from political labor being those of 
his ranch and hunting life in the Wild West, and of his active career 
as a soldier. These were his recreations, his intervals of holiday 
enjoyment. As for resting—the man cannot do it; it is not in him. 
He has got the posts he wanted throughout his life; and got one 
post he did not want, that of Vice-President. It is one that would 
appeal to the ambition of most of us, but it was a restful post, and 
Roosevelt was not hankering after rest. Yet by a strange dispensa¬ 
tion of Providence it lifted him to the very summit of an American 
political career; it made him President. 
He would not have been human if he had not felt a sense of 
triumph over those plotting politicians who had fairly forced him into 
the Vice-Presidential office, fancying in their shrewd souls that they 
had the inconvenient reformer shelved. Fate had broken the threads 
which bound down this modern Gulliver and set him free to carry his 
ideas to their highest ultimate. 
Yet that he was satisfied cannot be said. It was a bitter and 
sorrowful reflection that he had reached this high office over the slain 
body of his lamented predecessor, the loved and lovable McKinley. 
He would ten thousand times rather have spent his four years as 
voiceless chairman of the Senate than to be made President through 
the assassination of a dear and cherished friend. 
Nor was it altogether pleasant to feel that chance, not the act of 
his fellow-citizens, had lifted him to this high office. Did they want 
him? Was he not in some sense an interloper? That could only be 
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