We came into view once more of fair Lake Josephine, but we could not make much headway. We were held by conversational webs. The poet was tired, and at every halting-place he started on some engrossing theme which beguiled us into spending half an hour sitting on dead trees. He was in the rôle of Scheherezade talking to her sultan. We ought to have plunged down to the lake-shore, built a big fire and dried off, but I was foolishly persistent in the idea of getting to the Many Glacier camp that night. Presently we started talking of Roosevelt, and the poet held me by the coat for a whole hour while he explained how he had been carried off his feet by a Republican, and had defied his family and voted for Roosevelt and had been struck out of the family Bible, so to speak.
“I was for him until the end of his Presidency,” said Vachel. “He refused to give business and high finance the first place, he would not talk the holy gospel of tariff, he made the White House a national centre of culture, he gave a great progressive lead, and rallied to his banner the bright spirits of America; he hit the shams and the frauds and the trusts; he stood by the Negro; he was not afraid to express what he thought on any subject under the sun; he did not halt between yes and no, and he was the very opposite of the Adams type of politician.”
“But it burned him out,” Vachel went on. “He had a third and last period when he was not himself, when he acted the young man, and stage-managed the delusion of endless energy.”
And he told the story of Roosevelt’s last visit to Springfield with great gusto, imitating Teddie’s mighty stride down through the people to the platform, the war-cries and yells of the audience, the clash of the brass-bands.
“And he was not an orator, and he did not believe in the spoils system,” I interrupted maliciously. “And he did not believe in the families ruling America——”
No wonder we got lost in the willows.
A’m ti-erd, yes a’m ti-erd,
A got th’ bloo-ooes aw-fool ba-ad.
Ma feet is sore;