HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT
I THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all, who read this book were
born before the new century--the one we call the twentieth--began. It is
a young century still. Yet there has been time enough for many things to
take place in the country we call our own. Some of these you may
remember. Others many of you were too young to know much about. So it is
my purpose here to bring the story of our country up to the present
time.
[Illustration: ROOSEVELT SURPRISED BY A GIANT HIPPOPOTAMUS.]
I have not said much about our Presidents, but there was a President
elected in the first year of the twentieth century of whom I must speak,
since his election led to a dreadful event. In the following year (1901)
a beautiful exhibition was held at Buffalo, New York. It was called the
Pan American Exhibition, and was intended to show what the nations of
America had done in the century just closed.
I shall say little about the splendid electrical display, the fountains
with their colored lights, the shining cascades, the glittering domes
and pinnacles, the caverns and grottoes, and all the other brilliant
things to be seen, for I have to speak of something much less pleasant,
the dark deed of murder and treachery which took place at this
exhibition.
President McKinley came to Buffalo early in September to see the fine
display and let the people see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling
face while many hundreds of visitors passed by and shook hands with him.
In the midst of all this there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had
been fired. The President staggered back, with pallid face. Men shouted;
women screamed; a crowd rushed towards the spot; the man who held the
pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged forward in fury. "He
has shot our President! Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards had
a hard fight to keep the murderer from being torn to pieces by the
furious throng.
The man who had shot the President belonged to a society called
Anarchists, who hate all rulers and think it their duty to kill all
kings and presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered the death he
deserved. But his shot had reached its mark, and after a week of fear
and hope, President McKinley died. He was mourned by all the people as
if each of them had lost a member of his or her own family.
You probably know that when a President dies the Vice-President takes
his place. McKinley's Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore
Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping through the wilds and of hunting
wild beasts. At the time we speak of, when the news of the death of
President McKinley was sent abroad, Vice-President Roosevelt was off on
a long tramp through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, perhaps
hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.
When the news came, no one knew where he was, and dozens of the
mountain-climbers were sent out to find him. As they spread out and
pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard on all sides and
megaphones were used to send their voices far through the mountain
defiles. But hour after hour passed and the shades of evening were at
hand, and still no answer came; no sign of Roosevelt and his party could
be traced. Finally, when they were near the high top of Mount Marcy,
answering shots and shouts were heard, and soon the hunting party came
in sight.
When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they brought--that the President
was at the point of death--he could hardly believe it; for the last news
had said that he was likely to get well. He knew now that he must get to
Buffalo as soon as he could, so that the country should not be without a
President, and he started back for the clubhouse from which he had set
out at a pace that kept the others busy to keep up with him.
Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse, but there was to be no
sleep for him that night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, waited
his coming, and in very few minutes he was inside it, the coachman had
drawn his reins and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, plunging
into the darkness of the woods that overhung the road.
That was one of the great rides in our history. You would have said so
if you had been there to see. There were thirty-five miles to be made
before the nearest railroad station could be reached. The road was rough
and muddy, for a very heavy thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness
overhung the way, made more gloomy by the thick foliage of the trees.
Here and there they stopped for a few minutes to change horses, and then
plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts were in the mind of the
solitary passenger whom fate was about to make President of the great
United States, during that dark and dismal night, no one can tell.
Fortune had built for him a mighty career and he was hastening to take
up the reins of government, soon to be dropped by the man chosen to hold
them.
Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morning and the horses were
again changed. The road now before them was the worst of all, for it was
very narrow in places and had deep ravines on either side, while heavy
forest timber shut it in. But the man who handled the horses knew his
road and felt how great a duty had been placed in his hands, and at 5:22
that morning, when the light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach
dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. Here a special train,
the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished
passenger.
News of greater weight now greeted the traveler. He was told that the
President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before.
The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now
President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to
make him such.
Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night
stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted
away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the
thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron
horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute.
Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in
the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger
leaped to the platform and made all haste to the house of Ainsley
Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn
into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have
described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our
country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a
mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night
long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the
greatest nations on the earth!
I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he
was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another
kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the
great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to
have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in
this.
This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was
shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time
came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by
helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and
men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.
While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are
worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal to
connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but
when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second
thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memory
of the purchase from France of the great Louisiana country a century
before. Two years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed by
earthquake and fire, with great loss of life and property.
One thing more must be spoken of, for with this President Roosevelt had
much to do. This was to have great dams built on the mountain streams of
the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres of barren lands and
make them rich and fertile. Also, to save the forests, nearly
200,000,000 acres of forest land were set aside as the property of the
nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.
The time for another Presidential election came In 1908, but Mr.
Roosevelt would not run for the office again. I fancy he was tired of it
and wanted to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for Africa, the
land of the largest and fiercest animals on the earth. Here is the
elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage
beasts, and he spent a year in killing these animals and in keeping them
from killing him. I have no doubt you would like to read of the exciting
time he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop here and leave
it untold, for it is no part of the Story of Our Country.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The list of illustrations listed the photograph of the Steam Shovel at
Work as being the frontispiece. The book itself placed the photograph
between pages 182 and 183. As there is no reference to Panama or the
Steam Shovel in this chapter, it was moved to the front to be the
frontispiece as listed.
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
Page 16, "Northman" changed to "Northmen" (Northmen, named Leif)
Page 31, "siezed" changed to "seized" (governor seized him)
Page 38, "Chespeake" changed to "Chesapeake" (the broad Chesapeake)
Page 142, "Andre" changed to "Andre" (Major Andre, a)
Page 171, "who" changed to "whom" (to whom should be)
Page 217, "Virgnia" changed to "Virginia" (fighting in Virginia)
Page 270, "traveller" changed to "traveler" to match rest of book's
usage (greeted the traveler)