Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/134

100 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS to stand up against the fervor which the name of Roosevelt instantly aroused upon any occasion; and, little to the relish of these politicians, they were obliged to accept him as the candidate of the re publican party for governor of New York. In the fall of 1898, at the age of thirty-nine, Theodore Roosevelt was chosen to this office. It is singular to contemplate his two kinds of enemies. These were, on the one hand, the rabble of dishonesty and ring politics that he had been successfully fight ing and thwarting since the beginning of his career, and, on the other, certain supercivilized citizens of Boston and New York, whose inflamed consciences had developed into tumors. The "New York Journal" and the "Evening Post" have at various times denounced Mr. Roosevelt with equal bitter ness, concealing as much as possible his successes and exaggerating as much as possible his failures. No one knew better than the governor that his work in the cause of honesty in New York was scarcely begun in the spring of 1900. Some things he had certainly accomplished, and in some efforts he had distinctly failed. These events draw too near the present time to demand recapitulation. But it must be stated by way of reminder how greatly he deprecated the notion of being taken from his work in New York for any reason what ever. Events, however, are stronger than any man s opinion ; and in looking back upon the popu-