A trip to Chattanooga will never be forgotten by some of the army officers and other members of the party, who failed in keeping up, either riding or walking, with their athletic, enthusiastic leader, to whom fatigue seemed an unknown sensation.
The next scheduled trip was to Omaha, Nebr., but it ended at Indianapolis, as the President was there forced to undergo an operation of bone scraping as the result of the injury to his leg in the Pittsfield accident of the late summer. While not alarming, the operation carried an element of danger that kept the nation on the qui vive until complete convalescence was assured.
The state receptions of 1902 and 1903 were significant for their size and brilliance, as were all of those in the succeeding four years. To each came many of the great social and financial leaders of New York, who had never previously considered these official White House functions of sufficient importance for their attendance. But all through the Roosevelt régime the entertainments were distinguished by the presence of more of the national celebrities in arts, letters, sciences, finance, and social eminence than had ever been seen in Washington in such numbers before. The reason for this was due not merely to the long-established social position of the President and his wife, but to the personality of the many-sided Executive who touched more different kinds of people in a wider range of activities than had any of his predecessors. He was thoroughly versed in a greater variety of subjects and had the faculty of getting the measure of a project, whether it related to politics, invention, exploration, religion, navigation, finance, agriculture, mining, sport, or diplomacy, in a shorter time, with fewer words, than any other public man of his day.
Furthermore, his mind absorbed information with sponge-like avidity and possessed a trained quality of retaining the needed amount of detail for the complete picture of the enterprise, project, or policy to remain in a photographic clearness and enabled him to discuss his problems with amazing comprehension. He had a positive genius for study and research, and a gift for eliminating the non-essentials from his mental storehouse.
President Roosevelt handled his problems in a direct, fearless manner, and he accepted the attacks and criticisms hurled at him in a fearless attitude that enabled him to capitalize on his opposition. He started some reforms and innovations that contributed greatly to his working schedule, because he felt he had to keep abreast of public opinion. To one clerk was assigned the task of daily skimming through between three and five hundred newspapers and clipping therefrom every article commenting on or relating in any way, complimentary or otherwise, to the administration and its policies. These were classified and pasted into reference scrapbooks for the President’s perusal.
The winter of 1903 brought many interesting events. “Princess Alice” received an invitation brought by Prince Henry of Prussia from the German Emperor to christen his yacht, then under construction in this country. She accepted, and on February 25th, at Shooter’s Island, performed the little ceremony. Some time later, she received a handsome bracelet from Germany with a miniature of the Emperor surrounded by diamonds.
In order to keep himself evenly balanced in his strenuous days of constructive and routine work, the President sent for the director of the New York Athletic Club, Mike Donovan, to come down, test him out, and make a survey of his physical condition. Donovan came as to any of his pupils; and as his coming was the establishment of a brand-new precedent, there was a great furore. The President decided to have Donovan repeat the visit at least twice a year. Donovan gave a little account of the “interview” with the President of the United States, which appeared in the New York World and other publications at the time:
“Had President Roosevelt come to the prize ring instead of the political arena, it is my conviction he would have been successful. The man is a born fighter. It’s in his blood.
“It is no exaggeration when I say that in some mix-ups with him I have been compelled to resort to all the arts and devices that have come to me from years of serious fighting, often to slug right and left to save myself.
“I have a vivid recollection of my first fistic encounter with President Roosevelt. The Governor left me in the old billiard room of the executive mansion, at Albany, which he had fitted up as a gymnasium for his boys in order that they might begin their physical education under his eyes. He then went downstairs to don his boxing clothes. In a few minutes he returned.