terity 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 war. 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.

We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn
by four horses. A big snow-bank had to be shoveled through for us
before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot
Springs. Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand
feet, on a fairly level course that led now through woods, and now
through open country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five
feet, except as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean
warmth kept the ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow
packed for us by teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have
been impossible.

The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said,
this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the
sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he
would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of
us--Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself--would follow suit,
sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that altitude is no fun,
especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the President
is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses drag him in
a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would again
qui