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MR. McKINLEY’S SUCCESSOR IS THE YOUNGest man who has ever occupied the Presidential office. He is in his 43d year. Grant was nearly 47 when he became President; Cleveland 47, Garfield 49, Pierce 49, Fillmore 50, Tyler 51, Arthur 51. Clay was a candidate when he was 37 and Bryan when he was 36. Perhaps it is Mr. Roosevelt’s unconquerable vivacity of spirits, and perhaps it is the persistent recollection of his earlier successes, that causes people to speak of the President as if he were a mere boy “panting for twenty-one.” At all events the amazement of the public that a man of forty-two should become President of the United States is another proof that this is a period of leadership by young men. But at forty-two one is well out of the nursery. Mr. Roosevelt is eighteen years older than the younger Pitt was when he was Prime Minister of England, eight years older than Gladstone was when he entered the Cabinet, eight years older than Napoleon when he was made First Consul for life, and older than Frederick the Great when he invaded Silesia, or Grant when he took Vicksburg. But those who know Mr. Roosevelt intimately have no misgivings as to the maturity of his mind. His boyishness consists solely in the exhuberance [sic] of his nature and his enthusiasm for certain manly ideals. We may hope that these qualities will not be suffocated by the dignity of his new position.