PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 38, 7 May 1907, Page 6

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

'John burroughs, tho well-known nature writer, gives some entertaining glimpses of President Roosevelt in the “Atlantic.” He accompanied him on his trip to Yellowstone Park, whore 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 his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its note as quick as I did—and I had nothing else to think about, and had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. One daj' the word came to the tents that a. band of mountain sheep were coming down a wall of trap rock. The President, with coat off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was half shaved and the other side lathered. “By Jove,” said the President, “I must see that. The 9having can wait, and the sheep won’t.” So on he went, as he was, hatless, coatless, and saw the sight. One night in camp tho President told the story of one of his Rough Riders who had just written him from some place in Arizona. The The Rough Riders, wherever they are now, look to him ia time of trouble. This one had come to grief in Arizona. He was in gaol. So he wrote the President, and his letter ran sonfething like this : “Dear Colonel,— lam in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the lady ; I was shooting at my wife !” And ths Presidential laughter rang out over the tree-tops.

The President related how in a frontier hotel, he 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 my evident desire to avoid a fight, apparently gave him the impression that I co.uld be imposed upon with impunity. Ha 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 crowd, mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, “Well, 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 him as heavy a blow on the chin point as I could strike. He went down like a steer before th|» axe, firing both guns in the ceiling as he went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we ho.g-tied him and put him in an outhouse.”