CHAPTER XXVII HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT I THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all, who read this book were born before the new century--the one we call the twentieth--began. It is a young century still. Yet there has been time enough for many things to take place in the country we call our own. Some of these you may remember. Others many of you were too young to know much about. So it is my purpose here to bring the story of our country up to the present time. Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus. Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus.

I have not said much about our Presidents, but there was a President elected in the first year of the twentieth century of whom I must speak, since his election led to a dreadful event. In the following year (1901) a beautiful exhibition was held at Buffalo, New York. It was called the Pan American Exhibition, and was intended to show what the nations of America had done in the century just closed.

I shall say little about the splendid electrical display, the fountains with their colored lights, the shining cascades, the glittering domes and pinnacles, the caverns and grottoes, and all the other brilliant things to be seen, for I have to speak of something much less pleasant, the dark deed of murder and treachery which took place at this exhibition.

President McKinley came to Buffalo early in September to see the fine display and let the people see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling face while many hundreds of visitors passed by and shook hands with him. In the midst of all this there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had been fired. The President staggered back, with pallid face. Men shouted; women screamed; a crowd rushed towards the spot; the man who held the pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged forward in fury. "He has shot our President! Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards had a hard fight to keep the murderer from being torn to pieces by the furious throng.

The man who had shot the President belonged to a society called Anarchists, who hate all rulers and think it their duty to kill all kings and presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered the death he deserved. But his shot had reached its mark, and after a week of fear and hope, President McKinley died. He was mourned by all the people as if each of them had lost a member of his or her own family.

You probably know that when a President dies the Vice-President takes his place. McKinley's Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping through the wilds and of hunting wild beasts. At the time we speak of, when the news of the death of President McKinley was sent abroad, Vice-President Roosevelt was off on a long tramp through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, perhaps hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.

When the news came, no one knew where he was, and dozens of the mountain-climbers were sent out to find him. As they spread out and pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard on all sides and megaphones were used to send their voices far through the mountain defiles. But hour after hour passed and the shades of evening were at hand, and still no answer came; no sign of Roosevelt and his party could be traced. Finally, when they were near the high top of Mount Marcy, answering shots and shouts were heard, and soon the hunting party came in sight.

When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they brought—that the President was at the point of death—he could hardly believe it; for the last news had said that he was likely to get well. He knew now that he must get to Buffalo as soon as he could, so that the country should not be without a President, and he started back for the clubhouse from which he had set out at a pace that kept the others busy to keep up with him.

Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse, but there was to be no sleep for him that night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, waited his coming, and in very few minutes he was inside it, the coachman had drawn his reins and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, plunging into the darkness of the woods that overhung the road.

That was one of the great rides in our history. You would have said so if you had been there to see. There were thirty-five miles to be made before the nearest railroad station could be reached. The road was rough and muddy, for a very heavy thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness overhung the way, made more gloomy by the thick foliage of the trees. Here and there they stopped for a few minutes to change horses, and then plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts were in the mind of the solitary passenger whom fate was about to make President of the great United States, during that dark and dismal night, no one can tell. Fortune had built for him a mighty career and he was hastening to take up the reins of government, soon to be dropped by the man chosen to hold them.

Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morning and the horses were again changed. The road now before them was the worst of all, for it was very narrow in places and had deep ravines on either side, while heavy forest timber shut it in. But the man who handled the horses knew his road and felt how great a duty had been placed in his hands, and at 5:22 that morning, when the light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. Here a special train, the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished passenger.

News of greater weight now greeted the traveler. He was told that the President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before. The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to make him such.

Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute. Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger leaped to the platform and made all haste to the house of Ainsley Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the greatest nations on the earth!

I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in this.

This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.

While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memory of the purchase from France of the great Louisiana country a century before. Two years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed by earthquake and fire, with great loss of life and property.

One thing more must be spoken of, for with this President Roosevelt had much to do. This was to have great dams built on the mountain streams of the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres of barren lands and make them rich and fertile. Also, to save the forests, nearly 200,000,000 acres of forest land were set aside as the property of the nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.

The time for another Presidential election came In 1908, but Mr. Roosevelt would not run for the office again. I fancy he was tired of it and wanted to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for Africa, the land of the largest and fiercest animals on the earth. Here is the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage beasts, and he spent a year in killing these animals and in keeping them from killing him. I have no doubt you would like to read of the exciting time he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop here and leave it untold, for it is no part of the Story of Our Country.

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