To Henry Adams

September 19, 1901.     

     The President’s death was all the more hideous that we were so sure of his recovery. Root and I left Buffalo on Wednesday convinced that all was right. I had arranged with Cortelyou that he was to send a wire the next day telling me if the Doctors would answer for the President’s life. He sent it, and I wrote a circular to all our Embassies saying that recovery was assured. I thought it might stop the rain of inquiries from all over the world. After I had written it, the black cloud of foreboding, which is always just over my head, settled down and enveloped me, and I dared not send it. I spoke to Adee and he confirmed my fears. He distrusted the eighth day. So I waited—and the next day he was dying.
     I have just received your letter from Stockholm, and shuddered at the awful clairvoyance of your last phrase about Teddy’s luck.
     Well, he is here in the saddle again. That is, he is in Canton, [267][268] and will have his first Cabinet meeting in the White House to-morrow. He came down from Buffalo Monday night—and in the station, without waiting an instant, told me I must stay with him—that I could not decline nor even consider. I saw, of course, it was best for him to start off that way, and so I said I would stay, forever, of course, for it would be worse to say I would stay a while than it would be to go out at once. I can still go at any moment he gets tired of me, or when I collapse.