“You have already shown that a man may be absolutely honest and yet practical; a reformer by instinct and a wise politician; brave, bold and uncompromising, and yet not a wild ass of the desert.  The exhibition made by the professional independents in voting against you for no reason on earth except that somebody else was voting for you, is a lesson that is worth its cost.” [Footnote:  “Autobiography,” p. 296.]

The year 1900 was the year of a Presidential election.  Mr. McKinley was to run again on the Republican ticket, and later it appeared that Mr. Bryan would oppose him again, as he had in 1896.  The Republican Vice-President, Mr. Hobart, had died in office, so the Republicans had to find someone to go on the ticket with President McKinley.  Roosevelt was mentioned for the office, and Platt warmly agreed, hoping to get him out of New York politics.  Roosevelt, at first, refused to consider an office which has more dignity than usefulness about it.  Another utterance of Secretary of State John Hay is interesting.  He wrote to a friend: 

“Teddy has been here:  have you heard of it?  It was more fun than a goat.  He came down with a somber resolution thrown on his strenuous brow to let McKinley and Hanna know once for all that he would not be Vice-President, and found to his stupefaction that nobody in Washington, except Platt, had ever dreamed of such a thing.” [Footnote:  Thayer, p. 148.]

Mr. Hay was one of the wisest of our statesmen; one of the most polished and agreeable men in public life.  Yet this letter shows how the older men often mistook Roosevelt.  For, in less than a year after Mr. Hay had gently poked fun at “Teddy” for thinking that he might be made Vice-President, and said that there was not the slightest danger of such a thing happening, Roosevelt had been elected to that office.  His enjoyment of his work, his bubbling merriment, his lack of the old-fashioned, pompous manners which used to be supposed proper for a statesman, made many older men inclined to treat him with a sort of fatherly amusement.  They looked at his acts as an older man might look at the pranks of a boy.  And then, suddenly, they found themselves serving under this “youngster,” in the Government!  It was a surprise from which they never recovered.  I have said that the reporters, the makers of funny pictures in the newspapers, and others, exaggerated Roosevelt’s traits, and created a false idea about him.  This is true.  But it is also true that there was a great deal of real and honest fun poked at him throughout his life, and that it added to the public enjoyment of his career.  The writers of comic rhymes, the cartoonists, and the writers of political satire had a chance which no other President has ever given them.  Many of our Presidents—­wise and good men—­and many Senators, Governors, Cabinet officers and others, have gone about as if they were all ready to pose for their statues.  Roosevelt never did this.  He bore himself in public with dignity, and respect for the high offices to which the people elected him.  But he did not suggest the old style of portrait, in which a statesman is standing stiffly, hand in the breast of his coat, a distant view of the Capitol in the background.  He had too keen a sense of fun for anything of the sort.