He was never a humbug.  He did not deny that he enjoyed being President.  He never let his friends point to him, while he was in the White House, as a martyr.  He had a good time wherever he was.  As he wrote: 

I remember once sitting at a table with six or eight other public officials, and each was explaining how he regarded being in public life—­how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a thankless constituency was telling upon him—­and that nothing but the fact that he felt that he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare of his country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship.  It went round the table until it came to my turn.  This was during my first term of office as President of the United States.  I said:  “Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding.  I like my job, and I want to keep it for four years more.” [Footnote:  Abbott, p. 100.]

As for the question whether he acted from personal ambition, or from devotion to the cause he represented, the following incident is as strong a piece of evidence as we have about any of our public men.  It is related by Mr. Travers Carman, of the Outlook, who accompanied Colonel Roosevelt to the Republican convention in 1912.

Roosevelt, on the evening of this conference in the Congress Hotel, lacked only twenty-eight votes to secure the nomination for President.  Mr. Carman was in the room, when a delegate entered, in suppressed excitement, announcing that he represented thirty-two Southern delegates who would pledge themselves to vote for the Colonel, if they could be permitted to vote with the “regular” Republicans on all matters of party organization, upon the platform, and so on.  Here were thirty-two votes,—­four more than were needed to give him the nomination.

Without a moment’s hesitation and in the death-like silence of that room the Colonel’s answer rang out, clearly and distinctly:  “Thank the delegates you represent, but tell them that I cannot permit them to vote for me unless they vote for all progressive principles for which I have fought, for which the Progressive element in the Republican party stands, and by which I stand or fall.”  Strong men broke down under the stress of that night.  Life-long friends of Mr. Roosevelt endeavored to persuade him to reconsider his decision.  After listening patiently he turned to two who had been urging him to accept the offer of the Southern delegates, placed a hand on the shoulder of each, and said:  “I have grown to regard you both as brothers; let no act or word of yours make that relationship impossible.” [Footnote:  Abbott, p. 85.]

Two important law-suits occupied some of Roosevelt’s time after the Progressive campaign.  One of the favorite slanders about Roosevelt, repeated mostly by word of mouth, was that he drank to excess or was an habitual drunkard.  At last it began to be repeated in print; a Michigan newspaper printed it, coupled with other falsehoods concerning his use of profane language.  Few public men would have cared to bring suit, because the plaintiff must stand a cross-examination.  But Roosevelt was careful of his good name; he did not intend that persons should be able to repeat slander about him, except in deliberate bad faith.