[untitled]
The new President, Mr. Roosevelt,
is from a stock which has always been patriotic and God-fearing.
His own past life is an augury of what he ought to accomplish in
carrying out the work of Mr. McKinley. His was the shortest inaugural
ever known, containing but a single statement. His first public
utterance after reaching the White House was embraced in a proclamation
appointing September 19 as a day of mourning and prayer throughout
the United States, in memory of his predecessor. Mr. Roosevelt is
the youngest man who has ever been called to the Presidential chair
and, while on that account there has been a disposition, particularly
in foreign countries, to fear that he would not fully size up to
the situation, yet those who know him intimately in this country
are entirely aware that he is likely to follow in Mr. McKinley’s
footsteps more closely than any man who is at present in the public
eye. If in some matters he has achieved notoriety for intrepidity,
he has never been found vacillating, and he is entirely frank. He
made an address at Minneapolis only four days before the assassination
of Mr. McKinley, and it almost seemed like an echo of the then President’s
own words at Buffalo. In this grave crisis it is an admirable thing
that an entire nation, with scarcely an exception, places more dependence
upon Mr. Roosevelt than it ever has upon any regularly inaugurated
Executive elected by any party. As it is, the South as well as the
North, the West as well as the East, expect Mr. Roosevelt will continue
along the lines marked out by his predecessor, and will take counsel
with those members of the Cabinet who were fully imbued with the
late President’s principles. The new President has been a scholarly
man from his early youth, and his public works are numerous, considering
the busy years of his life. A list of them recently published shows
that at least eighteen, and perhaps more, full works have been published
bearing his signature as author since 1885, an average of more than
one a year. These works are all breezy in style, [674][675]
broad in their human outlook, and have come fresh from his mind
and heart. His descriptions, whether of the events upon the prairie
or in the Spanish-American War, have been vivid, and he has had
a wide field of readers. One of his most thoughtful productions
has been “The Biography of Oliver Cromwell,” which was issued about
a year ago, and which attracted as much attention in England as
in America.
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