things make when we are young!"

COWBOY FRIENDS

At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his
ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with
the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy
with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with
delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which
he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had
entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of
it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again
with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The
men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed
cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget
the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch
days,--that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came
back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes
of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was,
and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly
recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the
names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life,
instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have
made it more vivid by contrast.

When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those
men very beautiful."

"How could I help it?" he said.

"Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such
friendships."

"Then I pity them," he replied.

RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM

He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It
had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his
eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and
cattlemen.

Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough
Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the
Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had
not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his
rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that
he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events
above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid.

Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening
twilight, and the President stood on the