upon the Colonel smilingly said:

"No, it's no fake," and opening his vest, the blood-red stain upon his
linen was clearly visible.

A half-stifled expression of horror swept through the audience.

About the first remark uttered in the speech, as the Colonel grinned
broadly at the audience, was:

"It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose. I'm all right, no
occasion for any sympathy whatever, but I want to take this occasion
within five minutes after having been shot to say some things to our
people which I hope no one will question the profound sincerity of."

Throughout his speech, which continued for an hour and twenty minutes,
the doctors and his immediate staff of friends, sitting closely behind
him, expected that he might at any moment collapse. I was so persuaded
of this that I stepped over the front of the high platform to the
reporters' section immediately beneath where he was speaking, so that I
might catch him if he fell forward.

These precautions, however, were unnecessary, for, while his speech
lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock
and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a
soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things
in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who
at the close of his official service as President in 1909 left that
high office the most beloved public figure in our history since Lincoln
fell, and the most respected citizen of the world. As was said in an
editorial in the Chicago Evening Post:

"There is no false sentiment here; there is no self-seeking. The
guards are down. The soul of the man stands forth as it is. In the
Valley of the Shadow his own simple declaration of his sincerity,
his own revelation of the unselfish quality of his devotion to the
greatest movement of his generation, will be the standard by which
history will pass upon Theodore Roosevelt its final judgment. This
much they cannot take from him, no matter whether he is now to live
or to die."

To the men of America, who either love or hate Roosevelt personally,
these words from his speech must carry an imperishable lesson:

"The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech. But
I will try my best.

"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say as
solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow Americans.

"First of a