I want no better Governor than that, and I guess we
shall want him a long time before we get one as good.
I found out upon our electioneering tours that I was not a good
stump-speaker, especially on the wing with five-minute stops of the
train. It used to pull out with me inwardly raging, all the good
things I meant to say unsaid. The politicians knew that trick
better, and I left the field to them speedily. Thereafter I went
along just for company. Only two or three times did I rise to
the occasion. Once when I spoke in the square at Jamestown, N.Y.,
where I had worked as a young lad and trapped muskrats in the creek
for a living. The old days came back to me as I looked upon that
mighty throng, and the cheers that arose from it told me that I had
"caught on." I was wondering whether by any chance the old ship
captain who finished me as a lecturer once was in it, but he was
not; he was dead. Another time was in Flushing, Long Island. There
was not room in the hall, and they sent me out to talk to the crowd
in the street. The sight of it, with the flickering torchlight upon
the sea of upturned faces, took me somehow as nothing ever had,
and the speech I made from the steps, propped up by two policemen,
took the crowd, too; it cheered so that Roosevelt within stopped
and thought some enemy had captured the meeting.
Pages:
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430