LIFE AT OYSTER BAY

There alone the President is really at home, amid the scenes of his boyhood, where three generations of the Roosevelts have played. Sagamore Hill and its trophies of the chase. Oyster Bay, as the "summer capital," where a clerical force from the White House is busily employed. The naval reviews. - Going down in a submarine boat. - The peace in the great war between Japan and Russia made at Oyster Bay. - The President's distinguished guests and his pastimes. - Chopping trees and pitching hay. - Feathered visitors whom the Roosevelts welcome.

OYSTER BAY is where President Roosevelt really lives. What Mount Vernon was in Washington's time, what Monticello was in Jefferson's, Montpelier in Madison's, the Hermitage in Jackson's, Lindenwald in Van Buren's, Wheatland in Buchanan's, and what Gray Gables was when Cleveland was President, Sagamore Hill is to the nation in our day. It is the President's snug harbor, his haven from the tempests which forever beat upon the White House.

Oyster Bay is home to the President more than any other spot on earth. His grandfather first dis

covered it for the Roosevelts, and built him a stately summer home there, which he named "Tranquillity." His son succeeded to the place, and in due time his grandson, the President, built his home near-by at Sagamore Hill. All around are the scenes where as a boy he played and dreamed a boy's dreams. In the bay he learned to swim, and in the groves round about he gained his first lessons in nature. He points with pleasure to the place "where three generations of Roosevelts have raced down the steep slope of Cooper's Bluff," and all the coves and hills and hollows are as old friends.

The President's place contains hardly a hundred acres, and not more than twenty acres are under any kind of cultivation. The simple but roomy house sits on a great knoll, where it overlooks a glorious stretch of Long Island Sound and the Connecticut shore beyond. The first story is of brick and the rest of the structure is shingled. Within are spacious halls and rooms, big fireplaces, walls lined with books, and floors strewn with the skins of the bears and mountain lions, panthers, and buffalo, which the master of the place brought back from the chase, while over mantels and doors are magnificent heads

of elk, and deer, and antelope, and Rocky Mountain sheep, all personal souvenirs of "the strenuous life."

Fond as he is of play, Mr. Roosevelt, more than any other President, takes his work with him when he leaves Washington. Oyster Bay actually becomes the summer capital of the nation. Executive offices are opened over a store in the village, and a clerical force is kept busily employed. Several hours each day are given by the President to despatching the correspondence and other public business brought to him by his secretary, and to holding interviews with those who call by appointment. Strangers must first present themselves at the office in the village; and Secret Service men, on guard day and night at Sagamore Hill, see that no one without the proper credentials is permitted to trespass on the President's time.

Oyster Bay, being a suburb of New York, only a few miles from the boundary of the city, and an hour's ride from its centre on the express, receives a constant stream of official and political visitors. The eyes of all the world were upon it throughout the long summer, when the President was making peace between Japan and Russia, from Sagamore Hill.

There he received the embassies of the two warring powers and brought them together, and thither he summoned first one and then the other of them, when their negotiations were threatened with wreck. Hardly a day passes without visitors and affairs of importance. Great naval reviews have been held by the President off the shore of Oyster Bay, and it was from a wharf there that he made his secret trip, unknown to his family, in the submarine boat Plunger. He was on her three hours in all, and at one time was under water for fifty minutes, going down to the bottom of the Sound, where he sat as cozy as could be, listening to the explanation of the boat, wholly innocent of the sudden storm which was sweeping the surface of the water above him.

Distinguished guests are nearly always to be found at the President's table at Sagamore Hill. Mr. Jacob Riis tells of his going there to complain that a rule had been adopted by the War Department, discontinuing the custom of having the names of private soldiers who were killed in the Philippines cabled home. The reports merely dismissed the matter by saying that so many unnamed privates had fallen. Mr. Riis's chance to speak of the matter did