train,
the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished
passenger.

News of greater weight now greeted the traveler. He was told that the
President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before.
The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now
President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to
make him such.

Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night
stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted
away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the
thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron
horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute.
Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in
the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger
leaped to the platform and made all haste to the house of Ainsley
Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn
into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have
described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our
country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a
mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night
long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the
greatest nations on the earth!

I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he
was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another
kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the
great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to
have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in
this.

This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was
shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time
came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by
helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and
men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.

While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are
worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal to
connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but
when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second
thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memo