The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt | Page 5

But fortunately I
had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech
(holds up manuscript with bullet hole) and there is a bullet--there is
where the bullet went through and it probably saved me from it going
into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I can not make a very
long speech, but I will try my best. (Cheers.)
"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident and say a
word of a solemn warning, as I know how to my fellow countrymen.
First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too
important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death, and
now I can not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being
shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for
many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you to
understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. (Applause and cheers.)
No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every
way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do
and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute
truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or
not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that
a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety
about his personal safety, but I can not understand a man fit to be a
colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is
occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his
duty. (Applause and cheers.)
"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the
progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our people;
a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the
women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of

that movement.
"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as
absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I
am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally.
I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction
because I want to say something very serious to our people and
especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man
was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the
stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the
hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot--the shot, the bullet went in
here--I will show you (opened his vest and shows bloody stain in the
right breast; stain covered the entire lower half of his shirt to the waist).
"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to
give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not
know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He
stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when
they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me
in the darkness.
"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him,
but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be
inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse
that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers
in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
(Applause and cheers.)
"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks
with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party
(applause) and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers,
to the republican, the democratic and the socialist parties that they
cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind
of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that
brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when
the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot
expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.

"Now friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word,
I do not care a rap about being shot not