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to make me feel so. I have seen a good many Presidents come and go in this old house, and I liked them all. They were all good and kind; but I declare I feel as if I could go twice as far and twice as quick when he asks me to, and do it twice as gladly."

I guess he knows, too, how his Rough-Riders felt about their Colonel..

XIV

CHILDREN TRUST HIM

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XIV

CHILDREN TRUST HIM

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HEN the President came back from his long Western trip, I went to meet him on the Long Island ferry. I had myself returned from the Western country a little while before, a very tired man, though I had only to lecture once each night; and when I remembered his experience on that record-breaking journey I expected to meet a jaded, worn-out man. But his powers of physical endurance are truly marvelous. I found him as fresh, to all appearances, as if he had been off in the woods on a hunt instead of shaking hands with and being entertained by half the nation. No doubt going home was part of it; for he knew how they had counted the days to his return at Sagamore Hill, and now an hour or two-then he should see them.

His eyes fairly danced as he sat down to tell me of the trip. There was so much, he said, that it would take a month. And then, as in mind he went back over the thousands of miles he had traveled, the Sunday quiet of a little Kansas prairie town, and a picture from the service that brought the farmers in from fifty miles around, stood out among all the rest. The children came to his car to take him to church, and when the people had all been seated two little girls for whom there was no room stood by his pew. He took them in and shared his hymn-book with them, and the three sang together, they with their clear girlish voices, he with his deep bass. They were not afraid or embarrassed; he was just their big brother for the time. And there was the tenderness in his voice I

told me of them.

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love to hear as he

You should have seen their innocent little faces. They were so dainty and clean in their starched dresses, with their yellow braids straight down their backs. And they thanked me so sweetly for sharing the book with them that it was a hardship not to catch them up in one's arms and hug them then and there."

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