He had a good time wherever he was.
As he wrote:
I remember once sitting at a table with six or eight other public
officials, and each was explaining how he regarded being in public
life--how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from
resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a
thankless constituency was telling upon him--and that nothing but
the fact that he felt that he ought to sacrifice his comfort to
the welfare of his country kept him in the arduous life of
statesmanship. It went round the table until it came to my turn.
This was during my first term of office as President of the United
States. I said: "Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any
misunderstanding. I like my job, and I want to keep it for four
years more." [Footnote: Abbott, p. 100.]
As for the question whether he acted from personal ambition, or
from devotion to the cause he represented, the following incident
is as strong a piece of evidence as we have about any of our
public men. It is related by Mr. Travers Carman, of the Outlook,
who accompanied Colonel Roosevelt to the Republican convention in
1912.
Roosevelt, on the evening of this conference in the Congress
Hotel, lacked only twenty-eight votes to secure the nomination for
President. Mr. Carman was in the room, when a delegate entered, in
suppressed excitement, announcing that he represented thirty-two
Southern delegates who would pledge themselves to vote for the
Colonel, if they could be permitted to vote with the "regular"
Republicans on all matters of party organization, upon the
platform, and so on.
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