PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S RAPID READING.

Evening Post, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 20 May 1905, Page 15

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S RAPID READING.

I havo no record of tho . President's recent reading, bub it is not a secret thatjie is "keeping up the pace." -Some of my friends aro still "reading at" Morlcy's lluvo thick volumes of Gladstone's "Life." Tho President, of course, read thorn promptly, gaining, 1 am told, not only a fresh, but a much more favourable, view of thu gieat leader, whom he confessed ho hud hitherto failed to undpr«t4ind. A publisher not long ago told me. that Mr. Roosevelt seemed to havo his eye on the authors of their house, and now and then a private letter, full of nppieciulion, would ji:u>s through tho publihher'si hnndh un tho way to an author. In thu thick of the. eampaijui of 1001 1 happen to know that Ik- lv-read all of Muoaul.iy's "Histpry of England," all of Hhodis's "Liiv tory of tho United States," and Dickons's "Martin Chuxzlt-wii." "How does he manage to do it?" All 1 know about this is that, in tho fust nlaeo, he. has by nature or prautiue the faculty ot extremely rapid reading. Thero aio some men of letters and "griiewl readeri)" who never havo been able to aeqiiiio this art. Otheis can take in paragraphs or pages vellnigh at a glance. The President musr be one of these phot ogiiiphic readers who take almost lnsl.'tntly tho impulsion of a whole puiagruph •"' nearly a whole page, the eye runiiim; nlnn,j the tin.' with h;>li!iiinnliku iiipidity and le.-iput;; to the more important plmihi-H n* by inHiivit. 1 ha\o known tlu< /ullowiug to ocmr: — A G«ngre^mau muki-s a xUlriiu-tu to him mid hands him v Upc^iil'tfh jtnpir. Almi.-st iiiiuudiaH.i the PnxMetil hinds it back to him, vheieupon tho t'luijit-'SiiiHn «sn\» dt-piveutingly : "Mr. Pr-'idinl, may I not Vau: ihix p,tper with you? 1 am anxious thai yuii -.^hoiild read it." "JSul," niiMveis (!/>• l'»V.:d\ni, "I have lvid it ; ymi van examine me in it if yuu vu-b. '— The Century Magtuino. .