316   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

sat down in his seat from the time he left the station until we arrived at the Congress Hotel. He was up waving his widebrimmed black hat and bowing to the cheering mob. Every minute there was a flash, `some miscreant photographer,' as T. R. calls them, had taken a bang at the Colonel. We had less than an hour to check our baggage in our rooms, wash up, arrange with the Western Union for filing stories, and get ready to accompany the Colonel to the Auditorium Theatre across the street.

" Thanks to the excellent police arrangements, we were able to walk unmolested through a human line of admirers who had been pushed into place by the mounted police. At 8 P. M. we called to interview the Colonel just before he left for the stockyards. After the Women's meeting Cronin and I had to run for the Western Union to get a start on our story. We taxicabbed back to the Congress Hotel, omitted dinner, and joined the Roosevelt auto procession to the stock-yards pavilion which is six miles out of Chicago. How those cars did shoot through the wide Chicago streets, preceded by a motor squad police patrol with the mufflers on the machines wide open. It seemed more like going to a fire than riding to a political meeting.

"In the melee of getting the Colonel into the hall, I got separated from the party and found myself confronted with six wooden-headed Chicago cops who refused to recognize the official ticket of admission, distributed to members of the Roosevelt party. I got by one of them by telling him that I had been all the way to Arizona with the Colonel. `Well, I'll be damned' he ejaculated. `If you've been in Arizona, there is no reason in h- why you can't get in here.' After I got inside, however, there were more difficulties. The cops and ushers refused to let me up on the platform with the Colonel and the other correspondents. While I was fighting, pushing, and kicking around in the crowd, I heard someone shout down from above, `We want Mr. Lewis up here right away. Make way for Mr. Lewis.' I looked up and saw that James R. Garfield, son of President

Garfield, himself former Secretary of the Interior, had come to my rescue. Mr. Garfield had been travelling with us for two days, and with his assistance the rest was easy. I was almost carried reverently to the platform and placed on a perfectly good chair where I could see everything.

"By the way, Mr. Garfield, next to the Colonel, is the most likeable, lovable man I met on this trip. He has a face that you like to watch silently, and contemplate, because you know how fine and corking he must be. I never heard such a long demonstration as the one which greeted the Colonel as he stepped out before 18,ooo men and women, each of whom seemed to have a small flag. It began at three minutes before eight and it stopped at thirty-two minutes past eight. In that long interim you could hear nothing but one continuous roar of cheering shouts and stamping feet. There was nothing articulate, no special cries distinguishable from others, just one blast as though some Titan engineer had tied down the heavy chain which released the whistle of ioo,ooo voice power. All efforts to stop it were futile. There was nothing to do but to let it run down. The band played `Gary Owen' and the `Star Spangled Banner' and other selections, T. R. beating time with a large replica of a `Big Stick' which had been handed to him. Meanwhile, in this bedlam, Cronin and I were writing new `leads' to our story on pads in our laps. A Western Union man was sneaking up to the platform every ten minutes to get copy which was placed on wires on the pavilion. By writing this way, we got the story into New York before eleven o'clock, that is, when the meeting was over, by ten o'clock in Chicago; then there was the rapid shooting ride back to the hotel, a little grub and bath, and to bed. I was tired.

"We left Chicago at 6.25 A. M., the Colonel's car being hitched behind a regular train on the New York Central. The Colonel is fifty-eight years old today, as you will know, doubtless, before this letter reaches New Britain. I discovered the fact in reading his autobiography. He has been so fine to all

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" Do It Now"

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