When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the
journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not
always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The
President himself is a good deal of a storm,--a man of such abounding
energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around
him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied 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?