The President laughed heartily, and, throwing himself back into a capacious arm-chair, soon proved himself to be a very human specimen of mankind.
There is no doubt about it, Roosevelt is an extraordinary man, and a strong one. There may be a little of the ungoverned schoolboy about him, but he is right at heart. His energy and enthusiasm prompted him to do things which, in his position, may not always have been discreet, but he accomplished a vast deal more for America than folk in his own country yet realise.
It was all the more interesting to see and talk to this amazing personality as I had just come direct from Mexico. No greater contrast was possible than that between the two then Presidents of those neighbouring countries.
Diaz—calm, quiet, reserved, strong, determined, thoughtful, and far-seeing.
Roosevelt—impetuous, outspoken, fearless, hasty in action, and hurried in forming opinions.
Both remarkable men, very remarkable men, and utterly dissimilar in character as in physiognomy; each admiring the other in a perfectly delightful way. Roosevelt writes a hand like a schoolboy’s, and, with all his business rush and appetite for work, it somehow seemed to me that he would love quiet sentimental songs and pretty poems. No doubt there may be more clever men in America, more learned men, more suave and polished diplomatists, but this man is a judicious mixture that makes him great. In truth he is a gigantic personality. He is not in the least American except in his unrestrained enthusiasm and rough exterior. He gesticulates like a foreigner, his mind works quickly. Withal he was the right man in the right place, and the United States had every cause to be proud of him.
Once more I met, or rather saw and heard, America’s greatest living President. But how this chanced was at a sad time for our country.
As told elsewhere, I was doing a cure at Woodhall Spa at the time of King Edward VII.’s death. It happened that on my return to town I tumbled across my old friend the late Sir Joseph Dimsdale, in the railway dining-car, when the conversation turned on Mr. Roosevelt and his visit to England.
I regretted the circumstances that had saddened his reception; also that he should see nothing of our Court and alas! of the Monarch whom he had so much admired. And then we talked of the Freedom of the City, which was to be conferred on the ex-President in a few days’ time.