final record of the case would be rightly adjudged was in a vein of withering rebuke.

PRESIDENT WAITED RESTIVELY.

The arrows he shot back must have found a mark, for even before he finished the President was restive and eager to interject a running debate, rather than let the Senator alone undisturbed to the finish.

The President spoke thirty minutes. The Senator had the floor twenty minutes. In those fifty minutes, however, events occurred so fast that it curtailed four courses of the dinner.

Even Uncle Joe Cannon could not serve as a poultice. It is true all hands sang "Auld Lang Syne," and then rushed to the streets to catch their breath and gossip.

A SENSATIONAL ENCOUNTER.

"From almost any point of view," said a gentleman who was present, "it was an unfortunate and regrettable occurrence. But for the fact that the matter has to all intents and purposes become public property, I should not feel at liberty to say anything about it. Just how far the so-called proprieties must be observed in a case of this kind is an interesting question.

"The encounter between the President and Senator Foraker was of such a nature as to take it out of the ordinary category of happenings at a private dinner. It was sensational in the extreme, and nothing like it has ever taken place before.

"The responsibility for the unpleasant incident must, in my opinion, rest with the President, for he started the ball rolling, so to speak. I can best describe the incident by likening it to a battle in the prize ring. In the first round, Mr. Roosevelt entered the arena, wearing regulation boxing gloves. He made a long speech-a very long speech, for such an occasion. It was a condensation of his Japanese message and the Brownsville message, with copious citations from his annual message to Congress at the opening of the session in December. There was nothing new or startling in all this, and most of his auditors were able to check off his points in advance. However, toward the close Mr. Roosevelt veered around and touched up the Senate. He laid aside his soft gloves and put on a pair of the two-ounce kind. "He laid special stress upon the Brownsville case, and disdainfully alluded to the 'academic discussion' that had taken place in that body. He was striking at Senator Foraker then. Afterward he rapped J. Pierpont Morgan and Henry H. Rogers, the vice-president of the Standard Oil Company. Looking squarely at them, he sounded what was intended to be a warning that they and other men, representative of Wall street, should not undertake to block the reforms he had set in motion and still had in contemplation.

THE MOB, THE MOB, THE MOB.

"He declared it was well for them that the reforms were being put through by the forces of conservatism, for, otherwise, 'the mob, the mob, the mob' spirit might become crowned and plutocracy would be shown no mercy or consideration.

"Morgan and Rogers flushed deeply, while other guests squirmed in their seats. The situation was becoming strained, and the course of the dinner had become interrupted.

"When the President concluded, Mr. Blythe, the toastmaster, called on Senator Foraker for a reply, for he evidently felt that, since there were many Senators present and the Ohio man personally had been the target for some of Mr. Roosevelt's shafts, it was the appropriate thing to call on him.

"The Senator boldly accepted the President's challenge. Personally, I believe he would not have selected such a time or place for an encounter with the President, but as he had been attacked he had a right to defend himself. I have heard Mr. Foraker in the Senate on many occasions, but I have never seen him appear to better advantage than he did on Saturday night. He was truly eloquent, and gave the President the plainest talk he has probably ever listened to. I did not look at his hands, but I think he had on one-ounce gloves. His blows were hard and landed with great force. To the Ohio Senator the President of the United States looked the same as any other individual. In a word, the President was only a citizen.

LECTURED THE PRESIDENT.

"He first told Mr. Roosevelt that he would discover by the time the Senate concluded its investigation of the Brownsville case that the discussion in the Senate had been more than academic, and ventured to predict that the results would prove it. "Then he read the President a lecture, which those who heard it will never forget. It was one of the most complete and effective excoriations I ever heard. Possibly the sting of the President's remarks was intensified by the knowledge that the friends of the administration in Ohio are trying to destroy him politically, although that is merely surmise on my part. Apparently he was inspired only by indignation. He declared with great dramatic effect that his oath of office was as sacred to him as was the President's to him, and no preachments from the White House were essential to the proper performance of his duty as a Senator. He gradually worked up to a splendid climax, declaring, with arms outstretched toward the President:

"No one in this country ever loved the President more than I did. No one ever fought harder for him, or more loyally. That was when he was in the right. But wrong, I have opposed him, and shall always do so. That is the way I see my duty to my conscience, my constituents, and my country, and I am glad I am able to say this in the presence of our distinguished Chief Magistrate. The people of my own State know I do my duty as I see it, and they know, as I myself have told them, that they can retire me if they believe I have a misconception of it.'

ROOSEVELT BACK TO THE FRAY.

"The President chafed under the pointed and courageous words of the Ohio Senator, and would have interrupted him but for the

restraining hand of the toastmaster. Finally, when the Senator finished he jumped to his feet and struck back, but he did not have time, nor could he find words to retort effectively. But he was mad clear through when he declared, between clinched teeth, that the only place the Brownsville battalion could get justice was at the White House-the Senate could not mete it out to the discharged negroes, because the power lay with him, and him alone."

ROOSEVELT AND FORAKER.

(From Washington Herald.)

Ability is going to waste in public life because it lacks that essential accompanying component-courage. Rooseveltian courage has not become contagious. There are statesmen who at heart cordially approve the Administration's domestic policies, but who dare not say so. Other statesmen, apparently the majority, are negatively arrayed against the President, but dare not publicly make known the fact. Calling themselves conservatives, they are called reactionaries. They would have a President who would "let well enough alone;" they would give the Presidential pendulum a backward swing.

In this interesting political crisis it is refreshing to find one Republican-a solitary commanding figure out in the open, standing for something and unafraid; a statesman of convictions; of courage to express them, even if they do happen to run counter to the views of the powers that be. The Hon. Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, is that Republican. He is the bravest man in public life today-outside the White House. Right or wrong, as to Brownsville or the railroads, he is challenging his country's admiration. He challenged it a year ago. We have no doubt he challenges the admiration of the President himself. A manly man respects a manly foe. There is scant manliness, we regret to say, in the present-day trend of Republican politics.

Call him reactionary, if you like, but in the United States Senate, when it comes to courage, Foraker looms up "the noblest Roman of them all."*

Since the text was in print Arthur W. Dunn's "Gridiron Nights" has relieved me of all the misgivings I had in publishing what I have said about the Gridiron dinner-debate with the President by giving an account so nearly in accord with my own that I feel I am neither abusing the confidence enjoined upon the guests of the Club nor misrepresenting in the slightest any of the facts I have stated.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE BROWNSVILLE AFFRAY--Continued.

HE relations of President Roosevelt and myself were

THE

strained before the Gridiron Club encounter. They were practically broken off by that incident. I heard a few days afterward warlike reports from the White House; among other things, that it had been determined that I must be "eliminated" from public life.

I hoped as time passed the wounds would heal, but I was disappointed. Active hostilities soon commenced. The President fired the first shot when he sent me the following letter:

WHITE HOUSE.
WASHINGTON.

March 18, 1907.

My Dear Senator Foraker:-After careful consideration of the different candidates for appointment as judge in the newly created district in Ohio, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. John E. Sater, of Columbus, Ohio, best meets the requirements, and I shall accordingly give him a recess appointment. Sincerely yours,

HON. J. B. FORAKER,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

United States Senate.

This was not the first trouble I had had with him on account of patronage, but I think it was the last, for the reason, among others, that I never afterward made a recommendation to him of anybody for anything.

April 14, 1904, following a personal interview with him regarding patronage, in accordance with his request, I wrote him a letter in the nature of a memorandum as to three or four different appointments I had recommended. I concluded that letter as follows:

These cover all the matters, so far as I can recall, about which I was to send you a memorandum.

I do not think you have any idea, Mr. President, how exceedingly disagreeable this matter of patronage is to me. It would be disagreeable under any circumstances, but it is particularly so under those which have heretofore obtained and which seem to continue. I do not wish to be impatient or to add in any manner to your cares and burdens and troubles, but I hope it will not be necessary for me to trouble you again with a personal interview in regard to these or any other appointments. If the situation heretofore obtaining can not be changed, or at least greatly improved, I shall respectfully decline to have anything to do with the appointments from Ohio except only as it may be my privilege and duty to take action with respect to them in the Senate. Very truly yours, etc.,

J. B. FORAKER.

What I thus said to him expressed exactly my attitude with respect to all appointments throughout my service in the Senate. I disliked exceedingly that particular part of my official duty. I was always absorbed in the study and preparation for discussion of the great questions that were from time to time before the Senate. That not only made it impossible for me to give much attention to patronage, but made the whole subject of patronage disagreeable; so disagreeable, in fact, that I would not have had anything whatever to do with it had it not been that I had a duty to discharge in

connection therewith.

I recognized that this duty required me to make recommendations and that the dignity of my position required that my recommendations should be respected. Disregard of them involved not only disrespect, but also serious political disadvantage.

In March, 1907, when the President informed me that he had concluded to appoint Judge Sater, there was a recommendation made by me pending before him for the appointment of Judge John J. Adams of Zanesville, Ohio. It had been published in all the newspapers of Ohio that I had indorsed Judge Adams and it was apparently assumed that, inasmuch as I was the senior Senator from Ohio and a member of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and the judgeship in question was for the Southern District of Ohio, in which I resided, he would, of course, be appointed.

No better man for the position lived in the district. He had served successfully, even with distinction, as a Judge of