"They needn't worry about what to do with this ex-president," he said. "I have work laid out for a long time ahead."
Another member of our party then told about the Roosevelt act in The Follies of 1909, in one part of which some one asks Kermit (in the play) where the "ex-president" is. "You mean the 'next president,' don't you?" says Kermit. When Colonel Roosevelt heard this he was immensely interested, not so much in the words of the play, but in the fact that Kermit had been represented on the stage—dramatized, as it were.
And as we left for our own camp the colonel called out: "Now, don't forget. Just as soon as we all get back to America we'll have a lion dinner together at my house."
CHAPTER X
ELEPHANT HUNTING NOT AN OCCASION FOR LIGHTSOME MERRYMAKING. FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND ACRES OF FOREST IN WHICH THE KENIA ELEPHANT LIVES, WANDERS AND BRINGS UP HIS CHILDREN
The peril and excitement of elephant hunting can not be realized by any one who has known only the big, placid elephants of the circus, or fed peanuts to a gentle-eyed pachyderm in the park. To the person thus circumscribed in his outlook, the idea of killing an elephant and calling it sport is little short of criminal. It would seem like going out in the barnyard and slaying a friendly old family horse.
That was my point of view before I went to Africa, but later experiences caused the point of view to shift considerably. If any one thinks that elephant hunting is an occasion for lightsome merrymaking he had better not meet the African elephant in the rough. Most people are acquainted with only the Indian elephant, the kind commonly seen in captivity, and judge from him that the elephant is a sort of semi-domesticated beast of burden, like the camel and the ox. Yet the Indian elephant is about as much like his African brother as a tomcat is like a tiger.
The Hyenas Had Feasted Well