"On winter evenings in Rock Creek Park, strollers may observe the President of the United States wading pale and naked into the ice-clogged stream . . . Thumping noises in the White House library indicate that Roosevelt is being thrown around the room by a Japanese wrestler; a particularly seismic crash, which makes the entire mansion tremble, signifies that Secretary Taft has been forced to join in the fun" (xxii)."Although he hardly ever swears--his intolerance of bad language verges on the prissy--he can pack such venom into a word like "swine" that it has the force of an obscenity . . . Old timers still talk about the New York Supreme Court Justice he pilloried as 'an amiable old fuzzy-wuzzy with sweetbread brains.' Critics of the Administration's Panama policy are 'a small bunch of shrill eunuchs' . . . President Castro of Venezuela is 'an unspeakably villainous little monkey' . . . When delivering himself of such insults, the President grimaces with glee" (xxviii).
"He will continue to read in the light of a student lamp, peering through his one good eye (the other is almost blind) at the book held inches from his nose, flicking over pages at a rate of two or three a minute. This is the time of the day he loves best. 'Reading with me is a disease.' . . . Asked to summarize the book he has been leafing through with such apparent haste, he will do so in minute detail, often quoting the actual text. The President manages to get through at least one book a day even when he is busy" (xxxii-xxxiii).
"'I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face . . . As soon as he saw me he hailed me as "Four Eyes", in reference to my spectacles, and said, "Four Eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language . . . In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him. As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head . . . if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciations of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.' Next morning Roosevelt heard to his satisfaction that the bully had left town on a freight train" (275-6).
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