irst streak of dawn, and then pushed on for a
couple of hours before halting to take breakfast and to let the little
mare have a good feed. No plainsman needs to be told that a man should
not lie near a fire if there is danger of an enemy creeping up on him,
and that above all a man should not put himself in a position where he
can be ambushed at dawn. On this second day I lost the trail, and toward
nightfall gave up the effort to find it, camped where I was, and went
out to shoot a grouse for supper. It was while hunting in vain for a
grouse that I came on the bear and killed it as above described.

When I reached the settlement and went into the store, the storekeeper
identified me by remarking: "You're the tenderfoot that old Hank was
trundling, ain't you?" I admitted that I was. A good many years later,
after I had been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in
northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter and mountain
man. It was midwinter. I was rather proud of my achievements, and
pictured myself as being known to the few settlers in the neighborhood
as a successful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning
when I found out that they did not even allude to me as the
Vice-President-elect, let alone as a hunter, but merely as "Johnny
Goff's tourist."

Of course during the years when I was most busy at serious work I could
do no hunting, and even my riding was of a decorous kind. But a man
whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he
wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do
manual labor. When I worked on a ranch, I needed no form of exercise
except my work, but when I worked in an office the case was different.
A couple of summers I played polo with some of my neighbors. I shall
always believe we played polo in just the right way for middle-aged men
with stables of the general utility order. Of course it was polo which
was chiefly of interest to ourselves, the only onlookers being the
members of our faithful families. My two ponies were the only occupants
of my stable except a cart-horse. My wife and I rode and drove them, and
they were used for household errands and for the children, and for two
afternoons a week they served me as polo ponies. Polo is a good game,
infinitely better for vigorous men than tennis or golf or anything of
that kind. There is all the fun of football, with the horse thrown in;
and if only people would be willing