Nobody laughed at the jokes about him more heartily than he did himself.  When “Mr. Dooley” described his adventures as a Rough Rider, and spoke of him as “Alone in Cubia,” as if he thought he had won the war all by himself, he wrote to the author: 

“Three cheers Mr. Dooley!  Do come on and let me see you soon.  I am by no means so much alone as in Cubia. ...”

“Let me repeat that Dooley, especially when he writes about Teddy Rosenfelt has no more interested and amused reader than said Rosenfelt himself.” [Footnote:  Scribner’s Magazine, December, 1919, p. 658.]

Mr. McKinley was re-elected President of the United States and Mr. Roosevelt was elected Vice-President in November 1900.  Roosevelt had taken part in the campaign before election, and of this Mr. Thayer writes: 

He spoke in the East and in the West, and for the first time the people of many of the States heard him speak and saw his actual presence.  His attitude as a speaker, his gestures, the way in which his pent up thoughts seemed almost to strangle him before he could utter them, his smile showing the white rows of teeth, his fist clenched as if to strike an invisible adversary, the sudden dropping of his voice, and leveling of his forefinger as he became almost conversational in tone, and seemed to address special individuals in the crowd before him, the strokes of sarcasm, stern and cutting, and the swift flashes of humor which set the great multitude in a roar, became in that summer and autumn familiar to millions of his countrymen; and the cartoonists made his features and gestures familiar to many other millions. [Footnote:  Thayer, p. 51.]

In the following March he was sworn in as Vice-President.  His duties as presiding officer of the Senate were not severe, and he went on a cougar hunt in Colorado in the winter before inauguration to enable him to bear the physical inactivity of his new work.

When he came back to Washington again, to hold the second highest place in the national government, it troubled him to think that he had never finished the study of law, begun in New York many years before.  He asked his friend, Justice White of the Supreme Court, if it would be wrong for him to take a legal course in a Washington law school.  The Justice told him that it would hardly be proper for the Vice-President to do that, but offered to tutor him in law.  They agreed to study together the following winter.

But Roosevelt’s term as Vice-President was coming to an end.  He only occupied the office for six months.  He was soon to succeed to the highest office of all.

CHAPTER X

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In the first week of September 1901, President McKinley was killed by an anarchist in Buffalo.  The young man who shot him was rather weak-minded, and had been led to believe, by the speeches and writings of others, craftier and wickeder than himself, that he could help the poor and unfortunate by murdering the President.  This he treacherously did while shaking hands with him.