n and
cattlemen.

Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough
Riders regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the
Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had
not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his
rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that
he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events
above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid.

Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening
twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car,
gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a
book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and
tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to
me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which
was my station." It was plain to see that that strange,
forbidding-looking landscape, hills and valleys to eastern eyes,
utterly demoralized and gone to the bad,--flayed, fantastic, treeless,
a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry
coulees,--was in his eyes a land of almost pathetic interest. There
were streaks of good pasturage here and there where his cattle used to
graze, and where the deer and the pronghorn used to linger.

When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour,
it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned
out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the
committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President
stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing
crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken
by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down,
and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man,
woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting
them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose
hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember
you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes,"
said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was
among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was
very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they
were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay
and open it! The Presid