hours at a time. They always went above the haunts of deer, and saw little evidences of any sort of life roundabout. The goat trails led away in every direction, zigzagging up, higher and higher. Although these game paths were deeply worn they yet showed very little fresh goat signs.

"I had been as usual walking and clambering over the mountains all day long, and in the mid-afternoon reached a great slide with half-way across it a tree. Under this I sat down to rest, my back against the trunk, and had been there but a few moments when my companion suddenly whispered to me that a goat was coming down the slide at its edge, near the woods. I was in a most uncomfortable position for a shot. Twisting my head around I could see the goat waddling down hill, looking just like a handsome tame billy, especially when at times he stood upon a stone to glance around, with all four feet close together. I cautiously tried to shift my position and at once dislodged some pebbles, at the sound of which the goat sprang promptly up on the bank, his whole mien changing to one of alert, alarmed curiosity. He was less than a hundred yards off, so I risked a shot, all cramped and twisted as I was. But my bullet went low-I only broke his left fore-leg, and he disappeared over the bank like a flash. We raced and scrambled after him and took up the bloody trail. The trail went up the sharpest and steepest places, skirting the cliffs and precipices. Suddenly on the top of the mountain we came upon the goat close up to us. He had risen. from rolling and stood behind a huge fallen log, his back barely showing above it. * The second bullet went just too high, cutting the skin above the high spinal bones over the shoulders, and the speed with which that three-legged goat went down the precipitous side of the mountain would have done credit to an antelope on the level."

*

Weary and disgusted the men took up the trail. The goat had crossed the river on a fallen tree-trunk, and the men crossed that way.

also. But the goat had gone up the mountain. It was now nearly dark. The men were confident the goat could not go far in his present condition. Next morning at daybreak they again climbed the mountain and took up the trail. At last, about midday, they spied the goat on a ledge seventy yards off. This time Mr. Roosevelt shot true. During that trip the hunters shot deer and hoped to come upon bear, though in this they were disappointed. But it was white goats they were after.

One day the hunters climbed to the very top of a mountain range looking for game. They went from crag to crag and while they saw goat trails they saw none of the animals that made them.

"When I reached the farther side of the plain and was about entering the woods, I turned to look over the mountain once more, and my eye was immediately caught by two white objects which were moving along the terrace, about half a mile to one side of the lick." They were goats, and came along rapidly. It was close on to sunset, and the goats, wary as usual, must have smelt the footsteps of their enemy, and halted too far away for a shot to reach them.

"Shortly after noon next day we were on the terrace, having approached with the greatest caution. I wore moccasins so as to make no noise. We soon found that one of the trails was evidently regularly traveled, probably every evening, and we determined to lie in wait by it so as either to catch the animals as they came down to feed, or else to mark them if they got out on some open spot on the terraces where they could be stalked. As an ambush we chose a ledge in the cliff below a terrace with, in front, a breastwork of the natural rock some five feet high. It was perhaps fifty yards from the trail. I hid myself on this ledge, having arranged on the rock breastwork a few pine branches through which to fire, and waited hour after hour, continually scanning the mountain carefully with the glasses.

From time to time I peeped cautiously over the pine branches of the

breastwork; and the last time I did this I suddenly saw two goats that had come noiselessly down, standing motionless opposite to me, their suspicions evidently roused by something. I gently shoved the rifle over one of the boughs; the largest goat turned its head sharply around to look as it stood quartering to me, and the bullet went fairly through the lungs. Both animals promptly ran off along the terrace, and I raced after them in my moccasins, skirting the edge of the cliff where there were no trees or bushes. As I made no noise and could run very swiftly along the bare cliff edge I succeeded in coming out in the first little glade, or break, in the terrace at the same time that the goats did. The first to come out of the bushes was the big one I had shot at, an old she, as it turned out; while the other, a yearling ram, followed. The big one turned to look at me as she mounted a fallen tree that lay across a chasm-like rent in the terrace; the light red frothy blood covered her muzzle, and I paid no further heed to her as she slowly walked along the log, but bent my attention toward the yearling which was galloping and scrambbling up an almost perpendicular path that led across the face of the cliff above. Holding my rifle just over it I fired, breaking the neck of the goat, and it rolled down some forty or fifty yards almost to where I stood."

Both these slain goats proved good specimens, the old one being unusually large with magnificent horns. Mr. Roosevelt, an enthusiast, praises all mountain game-hunting and never tires of speaking of the glow that the contest for capturing the wild denizens of the high peaks gives. His strong masculine mind rejoiced in the outdoor life, the adventure, the daring and the danger. He understood pretty well the cities and towns of the Union, and he would understand the desert places of the land, its prairies and its mountains. He knew men; he knew politics; and he would know the noble wild animals and their characteristics. He had the instincts of the born

hunter, and while in the purlieus of the crowded capitals of the land he had his say and did his work, the prairie and the mountain and the plain called him, and he went there and became a Nimrod. Polished and educated men were his friends, statesmen, patriots; and he did not disclaim an equal friendship for the frontiersman and the cow-boy whose lives were passed away from the centers of present civilization while they blazed the way for a civilization yet to be. Perhaps some of his happiest days were passed with nature in paths scarcely trod by the foot of man before he trod them, and in the exercise of his freedom on the American deserts and the peaks of the frowning mountains his blood was renewed, his muscles made stronger and more enduring, his brain and body cleared of morbid cityisms till he was prepared to go back into the vortex of the "strenuous" life of town and State and country that called him over and over again.

CHAPTER VI.

Republican Candidate for Mayor-Largest Republican Vote for Mayor ever Polled in New York-Civil Service Commission-How he "Ruined Himself”Duties of Civil Service Commission-Abolishment of Abuses in PoliticsPaper on Civil Service Reform-Case before LIII. Congress-In Office Six Years-Resignation to Accept Office as Police Commissioner of New York.

N the year 1886, Mr. Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for Mayor against Abram S. Hewitt, United Democracy, and Henry George, United Labor. Mr. Hewitt was elected by about 22,000 plurality.

The canvass was not very exciting, except that Henry George was a candidate, and the labor problem, according to the labor organs, was about to be solved. The honesty of Henry George was not impugned, while his principles, as interpreted by his followers, were not always convincing. It is doubtful if Mr. Roosevelt ever considered his own election as a foregone conclusion. His speeches at the time published his now well-known attitude, though at the age of twenty-eight there had never before been a candidate for the New York mayoralty. He took his defeat in good part and retired, as much as a man of his virility in estimate of public affairs, could retire. He published his books and various articles in the magazines of the day, and enjoyed what his friends considered a well-earned rest, though that rest partook of the nature of rough traveling in the West for a part of the time. In 1889 he was appointed a member of the United States Civil Service Commission. By a strange conjunction

circumstances Mr. Roosevelt, author of the New York Civil Service law, was, through appointment as Civil Service Commissioner by President Harrison, put in a position in which, for half a