At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were
at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet
them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the
crowd. 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!