PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S STORIES.

Evening Star, Issue 12882, 3 August 1906, Page 11

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S STORIES.

John Burroughs, the well-known nature svriter, gives some entertaining glimpses of President Roosevelt in the current ! Atlantic.' He accompanied him on his trip to Yellowstone Park, where they lived the "simple life" for some weeks. The President was intensely interested in the fauna of the canons, " I found his interest in bird life very keen, and bis eye aud ear remarkably quick. Ho usually saw the bird or heard its note as quickly as I did, aud I had nothing else to think about, and had been teaching my eye and car the trick of it for over fifty years." One day the word came to the tenia that a band of mountain sheep were coming down a wall of trap rock. The President, with coat oft'and a towel around his neck, was shaving One side of his face was half shaved and the otherside lathered. " By Jove," said the President, '• I must Bee that. The shaving can wait, and the sheep won't." So on he went as he was, h&tless, coatless, and saw the sight. One night in camp the President to'd the story of cue of bis Rough Riders who had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, wherever they ara now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had come to grief in Arizona. He was in gaol. So he wrote the President, and bis letter ran somewhat like this : "Dear Colonel,—l am in trouble. 1 shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intetid to hit the lady ; I w*s abootiog at my wife!" And the Pn si denttai laughter rang out over tho treetops. The.President related how, in a frontier bote!, be saw a room full of men terrorised .by a half-drunken ruffian, who stood in the middle of the floor, compelling them to treat. "I went and sat down behind the stove as far from-him as I could get, and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that 1 wore glasses, together with ray evident desire to avoid a fight, apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and, ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The mostly sheep-herders and eaaali

grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, afraid 'to move. 1 was unarmed, arid thought rapidly. Saying 4 W*IU if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched llim as heavy a blow on the chin-point as t could strike. He went down like a steel 1 before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I jumped oh hiin, anil, with tny knees on bis chest, disarmed hira in a hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me,,and we hog-tied him and put him in an outhjuse." ,