He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he
went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and
good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or
had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in
each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme
was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to
receive him,--they usually boarded his private car, and were one by
one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse
of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to
the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the
train, and off for the next stop--a round of hand-shaking,
carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight
to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes
from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or
more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul,
elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion
he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved
the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the
vast Auditorium in Chicago--that rose and waved and waved again--was
one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed.
In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled
the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any
speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does
not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy
about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the
trusts.