Chapter XXVI [excerpt]

     After the speeches, as the boat was turning for the homeward trip, and he was chatting with a group of officers, we reporters began discussing whether we should interview Mr. Roosevelt about the Schley-Sampson matter.
     “He wouldn’t talk about it for publication,” said one. “I tried him at the hotel. He’d be pleas- [250][251] ant enough, but there’d be nothing doing in the way of a real interview.”
     “Of course not,” added another. “A Vice-President can’t talk, any more than the President can. He might have to be the whole thing himself at any time, you know. If someone should hit Mac in the head with a brick to-night, and do it hard enough, Teddy would be President to-morrow.”
     This was on Saturday, August 31. Six days later, on Friday, September 6, President McKinley was shot at the Buffalo Exposition. A week afterward he died, and Mr. Roosevelt became President.
     The man who made this strangely prophetic remark was H. S. Canfield. I had first met him four years earlier, in Kansas City. He had been the friend of Lafcadio Hearn in New Orleans. He had edited Brann’s Iconoclast after the picturesque character who founded that paper had been killed in a duel. He had worked on newspapers in many parts of the country. He had written books. Two years after this particular time a leading magazine had begun to publish a series of stories by him, and when his prospects seemed brightest he committed suicide, following a debauch.