d. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now."
Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and
another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see
what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking
hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to shake his
hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by such
eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, that
the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the secret
service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We probably
have never had a President who responded more freely and heartily to
the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd always seem to be
in love with him the moment they see him and hear his voice. And it is
not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm of address, but by
reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and his genuine
manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda last winter
I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at some place in
New England very near the President while he was speaking, and who
said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I loved him, and
had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him to pieces." It
is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such a liking as
this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in all public
places.

I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His
Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me
'His Transparency,' for all I care." It is this transparency, this
direct out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of
his popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the
politicians.

A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made
in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President,
"where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such
candor must make the politicians shiver!

I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in
the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we
reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp
April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops,
and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad
of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an
ambulance dr