The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt | Page 3

drove through, Col. Roosevelt waving a hand, the crowd now half-hysterical with frenzied excitement.
After rounding the corner I drew the revolver from my overcoat pocket and saw that it was a 38-caliber long which had been fired. As the Colonel looked at the revolver he said:
"A 38-Colt has an ugly drive."
Mr. McGrath, one of the Colonel's secretaries riding at his right side, said:
"Why, Colonel, you have a hole in your overcoat. He has shot you."
The Colonel said:
"I know it," and opened his overcoat, which disclosed his white linen, shirt, coat and vest saturated with blood. We all instantly implored and pleaded with the Colonel to drive with the automobile to a hospital, but he turned to me with a characteristic smile and said:
"I know I am good now; I don't know how long I may be. This may be my last talk in this cause to our people, and while I am good I am going to drive to the hall and deliver my speech."
[Illustration: Shirts Worn by Ex-President Roosevelt Showing Extent of Bleeding from Wound While He Spoke to 9,000 People.]
By the time we had arrived at the hall the shock had brought a pallor to his face. On alighting he walked firmly to the large waiting room in the back of the Auditorium stage, and there Doctors Sayle, Terrell and Stratton opened his shirt, exposing his right breast.
Just below the nipple of his right breast appeared a gaping hole. They insisted that under no consideration should he speak, but the Colonel asked:
"Has any one a clean handkerchief?"
Some one extending one, he placed it over the wound, buttoned up his clothes and said:
"Now, gentlemen, let's go in," and advanced to the front of the platform.
I, having been asked to present him to the audience, after admonishing the crowd that there was no occasion for undue excitement, said that an attempt to assassinate Col. Roosevelt had taken place; that the bullet was still in his body, and that he would attempt to make his speech as promised.
As the Colonel stepped forward, some one in the audience said audibly:
"Fake," whereupon the Colonel smilingly said:
"No, it's no fake," and opening his vest, the blood-red stain upon his linen was clearly visible.
A half-stifled expression of horror swept through the audience.
About the first remark uttered in the speech, as the Colonel grinned broadly at the audience, was:
"It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose. I'm all right, no occasion for any sympathy whatever, but I want to take this occasion within five minutes after having been shot to say some things to our people which I hope no one will question the profound sincerity of."
Throughout his speech, which continued for an hour and twenty minutes, the doctors and his immediate staff of friends, sitting closely behind him, expected that he might at any moment collapse. I was so persuaded of this that I stepped over the front of the high platform to the reporters' section immediately beneath where he was speaking, so that I might catch him if he fell forward.
These precautions, however, were unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who at the close of his official service as President in 1909 left that high office the most beloved public figure in our history since Lincoln fell, and the most respected citizen of the world. As was said in an editorial in the Chicago Evening Post:
"There is no false sentiment here; there is no self-seeking. The guards are down. The soul of the man stands forth as it is. In the Valley of the Shadow his own simple declaration of his sincerity, his own revelation of the unselfish quality of his devotion to the greatest movement of his generation, will be the standard by which history will pass upon Theodore Roosevelt its final judgment. This much they cannot take from him, no matter whether he is now to live or to die."
To the men of America, who either love or hate Roosevelt personally, these words from his speech must carry an imperishable lesson:
"The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech. But I will try my best.
"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say as solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow Americans.
"First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too many important things to think of to pay any heed or feel any concern over my own death.
"Now I would not speak to you insincerely