MR ROOSEVELT’S RIDE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9392, 11 March 1909, Page 2

MR ROOSEVELT’S RIDE.

Mr Roosevelt recently spent seventeen hours in the saddle and rode 98 miles over slushy Virginian roads for the patriotic purpose of confounding the critics who denounced as a hardship his recent order that military and naval officers should periodically prove their physical fitness by riding 90 miles in three days. “What a President who is not in training can do,” exclaimed Mr Roosevelt when he dismounted, with broad grin, from his steaming horse, “ought to be easy for men who are supposed always to keep in fit bodily condition.” The President started at 3.80 in the morning. He led his party nearly all the.way at a killing pace, stopping nowhere for longer than ten minutes to change horses, except at Warrenton, where the business houses and schools were closed and all the inhabitants assembled and demanded a speech. He did the honours of the occasion, shaking hands with everybody, and then ate a gigantic meal and rode back to the White House through the driving sleet. He arrived home at 8.80 in the evening, covered with mud from head to foot and with his coat and hat encased in ice. “It was bully,” the President shouted as, apparently unfatigued, he ran lightly to his room. Half an hour later be reappeared in evening dress, and was the life and sonl of the dinner party with which his strenuous day concluded.