ed on
his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving
personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass
through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in
the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few
attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it
likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had
visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done
only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my
life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out
there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on
horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not
been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be
likely to fare with me there?

THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY

I had known the President several years before he became famous, and
we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His
interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main
motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in
its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often
hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would
be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself.
For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was
no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as
Roosevelt.

HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS

Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in
the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting,
and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I
did,--as if he did not love them much more, because his love is
founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life.
She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I
might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not
come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park;
then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him
say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat.
I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion.

I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to
such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs,--men who
re