his own mother at his inauguration.
I would have given anything in the world if my mother could have been
at my inauguration,' {62} and then, continuing: 'I wish him well. He
has a hard task,' and after a long pause: 'But he is a good man and
will do his best.'"

He has spoken often, too, of Cleveland's love of sport, of the days
which Jefferson, the actor, and Cleveland spent together fishing and
shooting on and near Buzzard's Bay--the same spot where he himself as
a boy spent his days in like occupations. The sides of Cleveland's
character that appealed to him were the frankness with which he
expressed his views on the important questions of the day, the
sterling worth and high ideals which emphasized his sense of duty, his
love of country and his desire to do the best possible for his fellow
citizens, coupled with his perfectly unaffected family feelings and
the amazing devotion and affection which he invariably elicited from
all those who came into association with him, even to the most humble
hand on the light house tender. Jeffersonian simplicity could have
gone no further, nor could any man have been more definite,
far-sighted and fearless than was Cleveland in his Venezuelan Message.
These two extremes made a vivid and lasting impression upon {63} the
young man, because both sides struck a sympathetic chord in his own
nature.

There followed, then, the same association with McKinley, growing out
of the necessary intimacy of physician and patient. But in this latter
case two events, vital to this country as well as to the career of
Leonard Wood, changed the quiet course of Washington official life to
a life of intense interest and great activity.

These two events were Wood's meeting with Theodore Roosevelt and the
Spanish War.

One night in 1896 at some social function at the Lowndes house Wood
was introduced to Roosevelt, then assistant Secretary of the Navy. It
seems strange that two men so vitally alike in many ways, who were in
college at about the same time, should never have met before. But when
they did meet the friendship, which lasted without a break until
Roosevelt's death, began at once.

That night the two men walked home together and in a few days they
were hard at it, walking, riding, playing games and discussing the
affairs of the day.

This strange fact of extraordinary similarities {64} and vivid
differences in the two men doubtless had much to do with bringing them
together and keeping