d 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!

THE MULE-TEAM

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 drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I
experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might
have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered
the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting.

The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the
rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close,
and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping
the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself,