guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these
old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps--the men with whom
I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a
chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washington during my Presidency.
I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one day just before
lunch, a huge, powerful man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a
fighting character. It happened that on that day another old friend,
the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was among those coming to lunch. Just
before we went in I turned to my cow-puncher friend and said to him with
great solemnity, "Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the
British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause
international complications"; to which Jim responded with unaffected
horror, "Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of
it!"

Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite
unconsciously help me, by the insight which working and living with them
enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the
right type, but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind that
the men were of just the kind whom it would be well to have with me if
ever it became necessary to go to war. When the Spanish War came, I gave
this thought practical realization.

Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, have made these
men live as long as our literature lives. I have sometimes been asked
if Wister's "Virginian" is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have
mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real
life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked
with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards
in my regiment might have walked out of Wister's stories or Remington's
pictures.

There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of
course, and under the conditions of life they were probably more
dangerous than they would have been elsewhere. I hardly ever had any
difficulty, however. I never went into a saloon, and in the little
hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the
bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I
always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade
my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the
semblance of trouble.

Of course