Country Notes [excerpt]

     There seems to be something extremely appropriate in a democratic country like America having a President familiarly known as “Teddy,” and, according to the Times’ correspondent, that appears to be the designation commonly applied to Mr. Roosevelt. The same journalist, whose admirable description is worth anybody’s reading, says that Teddy bids good-bye to his guest and his coachman with equal cordiality. He quotes “three men in the crowd,” as Shakespeare would have called them, who probably gave an epitome of public opinion to the new President. “No,” Number One said, “we prefer him we know to Teddy, whom we don’t quite know.” Number Two’s remark was: “We forgive Teddy a great deal for his absolute honesty”; and Number Three chimed in: “I am thinking that when Teddy’s done with America, it will—maybe—require another Christopher Columbus to discover what is left of it.”

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     Seriously, however, Mr. Roosevelt enters upon his term of office under auspices very favourable to himself, although clouded for the time being with the melancholy fate of his predecessor. He is only forty-three years of age, which is very youthful for the President of a Republic, and one who has done nothing in public life so far except what he has been praised for. He is popular with rich and poor alike, and has that “open-airish” temperament which ought to go down well in a country a great part of which is not yet brought under cultivation. Mr. Roosevelt is a hunter and an explorer, a student and literary man, as well as a politician, and as, after all, there is no other field in which all-round capacity tells so much as in statesmanship, there ought to be a brilliant future before the new President.