" [Footnote: Scribner's Magazine, December,
1919, p. 658.]
Mr. McKinley was re-elected President of the United States and Mr.
Roosevelt was elected Vice-President in November 1900. Roosevelt
had taken part in the campaign before election, and of this Mr.
Thayer writes:
He spoke in the East and in the West, and for the first time the
people of many of the States heard him speak and saw his actual
presence. His attitude as a speaker, his gestures, the way in
which his pent up thoughts seemed almost to strangle him before he
could utter them, his smile showing the white rows of teeth, his
fist clenched as if to strike an invisible adversary, the sudden
dropping of his voice, and leveling of his forefinger as he became
almost conversational in tone, and seemed to address special
individuals in the crowd before him, the strokes of sarcasm, stern
and cutting, and the swift flashes of humor which set the great
multitude in a roar, became in that summer and autumn familiar to
millions of his countrymen; and the cartoonists made his features
and gestures familiar to many other millions. [Footnote: Thayer,
p. 51.]
In the following March he was sworn in as Vice-President. His
duties as presiding officer of the Senate were not severe, and he
went on a cougar hunt in Colorado in the winter before
inauguration to enable him to bear the physical inactivity of his
new work.
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