to start on the home journey, a
distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses
well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by
very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and
were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon,
being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so
early in the season.

A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way
to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around
through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic,
sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AS A NATURE-LOVER AND OBSERVER

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AS A NATURE-LOVER AND OBSERVER

Our many-sided President has a side to his nature of which the public
has heard but little, and which, in view of his recent criticism of
what he calls the nature fakirs, is of especial interest and
importance. I refer to his keenness and enthusiasm as a student of
animal life, and his extraordinary powers of observation. The charge
recently made against him that he is only a sportsman and has only a
sportsman's interest in nature is very wide of the mark. Why, I cannot
now recall that I have ever met a man with a keener and more
comprehensive interest in the wild life about us--an interest that is
at once scientific and thoroughly human. And by human I do not mean
anything akin to the sentimentalism that sicklies o'er so much of our
more recent natural history writing, and that inspires the founding of
hospitals for sick cats; but I mean his robust, manly love for all
open-air life, and his sympathetic insight into it. When I first read
his "Wilderness Hunter," many years ago, I was impressed by his rare
combination of the sportsman and the naturalist. When I accompanied
him on his trip to the Yellowstone Park in April, 1903, I got a fresh
impression of the extent of his natural history knowledge and of his
trained powers of observation. Nothing escaped him, from bears to
mice, from wild geese to chickadees, from elk to red squirrels; he
took it all in, and he took it in as only an alert, vigorous mind can
take it in. On that occasion I was able to help him identify only one
new bird, as I have related in the foregoing chapter. All the other
birds he recognized as quickly as I did.

During a recent half-day spent with the President at Sagamore Hill I
got a