“The man on the rented farm who is raising corn at fifteen cents per bushel to pay interest on a mortgage is apt to be bitter,” I argued.

However, this evening was an exception. Generally we talked of the West, of cattle ranching, of trailing and of the splendid types of pioneers who were about to vanish from the earth. One night as we sat at dinner in his house, he suddenly leaned back in his chair and said with a smile “I can't tell you how I enjoy having a man at my table who knows the difference between a parfleche and an aparejo.”

Although I loved the trail I had given up shooting. I no longer carried a gun even in the hills—although, I will admit, I permitted my companions to do so. Roosevelt differed from me in this. He loved “the song of the bullet.” “It gives point and significance to the trail,” he explained.

I recall quoting to him one of his own vividly beautiful descriptions of dawn among the hills, a story which led up to the stalking and the death of a noble elk. “It was fine, all fine and true and poetic,” I declared, “but I should have listened with gratitude to the voice of the elk and watched him go his appointed way in peace.”

“I understand your position perfectly,” he replied, “but it is illogical. You must remember every wild animal dies a violent death. Elk and deer and pheasants are periodically destroyed by snows and storms of sleet—and what about the butcher killing lambs and chickens for your table? I notice you accept my roast duck.”

He was greatly interested in my proposed trip into the Yukon. “By George, I wish I could go with you,” he said, and I had no doubt of his sincerity. Then his tone changed. “We are in for trouble with Spain and I must be on the job.”

To this I replied, “If I really knew that war was coming, I'd give up my trip, but I can't believe the Spaniards intend to fight, and this is my last and best chance to see the Northwest.”

In my notebook I find this entry: “Jan., 1898. Dined again last night with Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a man who is likely to be much in the public eye during his life. A man of great energy, of noble impulses, and of undoubted ability.”

I do not put this forward as evidence of singular perception on my part, for I imagine thousands were saying precisely the same thing. I merely include it to prove that I was not entirely lacking in penetration.

Henry B. Fuller, who came along one day in January, proved a joy and comfort to me. His attitude toward Washington amused me. Assuming the air of a Cook tourist, he methodically, and meticulously explored the city, bringing to me each night a detailed report of what he had seen. His concise, humorous and self-derisive comment was literature of a most delightful quality, and I repeatedly urged him to write of the capital as he talked of it to me, but he professed to have lost his desire to write, and though I did not believe this, I hated to hear him say it, for I valued his satiric humor and his wide knowledge of life.

He was amazed when I told him of my plan to start, in April, for the Yukon, and in answer to his question I said, “I need an expedition of heroic sort to complete my education, and to wash the library dust out of my brain.”

In response to a cordial note, I called upon John Hay one morning. He received me in a little room off the main hall of his house, whose spaciousness made him seem diminutive. He struck me as a dapper man, noticeably, but not offensively, self-satisfied. His fine black beard was streaked with white, but his complexion was youthfully clear. Though undersized he was compact and sturdy, and his voice was crisp, musical, and decisive.

We talked of Grant, of whom he had many pleasing personal recollections, and when a little later we went for a walk, he grew curiously wistful and spoke of his youth in the West and of the simple life of his early days in Washington with tenderness. It appeared that wealth and honor had not made him happy. Doubtless this was only a mood, for in parting he reassumed his smiling official pose.

A few days later as I entered my Hotel I confronted the tall figure and somber, introspective face of General Longstreet whom I had visited a year before at his home in Gainesville, Georgia. We conversed a few moments, then shook hands and parted, but as he passed into the street I followed him. From the door-step I watched him slowly making his cautious way through throngs of lesser men (who gave no special heed to him), and as I thought of the days when his dread name was second only to Lee's in the fear and admiration of the North, I marveled at the change in twenty years. Now he was a deaf, hesitant old man, sorrowful of aspect, poor, dim-eyed, neglected, and alone.

“Swift are the changes of life, and especially of American life,” I made note. “Most people think of Longstreet as a dead man, yet there he walks, the gray ghost of the Confederacy, silent, alone.”

As spring came on and the end of my history of Grant drew near, my longing for the open air, the forest and the trail, made proof-reading a punishment. My eyes (weary of newspaper files and manuscripts) filled with mountain pictures. Visioning my plunge into the wilderness with keenest longing, I collected a kit of cooking utensils, a sleeping bag and some pack saddles (which my friend, A. A. Anderson, had invented), together with all information concerning British Columbia and the proper time for hitting The Long Trail.

In showing my maps to Howells in New York, I casually remarked, “I shall go in here, and come out there—over a thousand miles of Trail,” and as he looked at me in wonder, I had a sudden realization of what that remark meant. A vision of myself, a minute, almost indistinguishable insect—creeping hardily through an illimitable forest filled my imagination, and a momentary awe fell upon me.

“How easy it would be to break a leg, or go down with my horse in an icy river!” I thought.