PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 43, 28 May 1907, Page 2

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

'John Burroughs, tho well-known nature writer, gives seme entertaining glimpses of President Roosevelt in the "Atlantic." He accompanied him on his trip to Yellowstone Park, where they lived the "simple life" for some weeks. The Presidwit was intensely interested in the fauna of the canons. "I found his interest in bird lifo very keen, and his eye and ear remarkably quick. Ho 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 day 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 xieck, was shaving. Quo side of his face was half shaved and the other side lathered. "By Jove," said the President,. "I must see that. The shaving can wait, and the sheep won't." So on he wont, as he was, hatless, coatless, and saw the sight. One night in camp the 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 tfcey are 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 his letter ran something like this : "Dear Colonel,— lam in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, bu,t I did not intend to hit tho lady ; I was shooting at my wife !" And the 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. '1 went and sat dowui behind the stove as far from him as ] could get, and hoped to escape his notioo. The fact that I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, aj>parently 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. Itfiiade 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 the axe. firing both guns in the ceiling as he went. 1 jumped on him. and, with my knees on his «hcst disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd "was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied, him «nd put him iu an outhouse."