Free Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

history of this period is written down, I believe my administration will be known as an administration of ideals.”
    He cheered up in the days that followed, as carpenters invaded the upper floor of the White House and began to box up books and other Washington acquisitions for transfer to Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt went into a distributive frenzy as memento seekers, hearing that he could not resist a sad face, kept making meaningful visits. “Why, Mother,” Ethel complained, “he has given away nearly everything in the study, and Aunty Corinne and every other guest in the White House have their arms full of pictures, books, and souvenirs.”
    Only when the carpenters transferred their hammering and sawing to Lafayette Square, and a review stand for the coming Inaugural Parade rose outside the North Gate, did the realization sink in that he was about to giveaway the largest memento of all: a presidency immeasurably enhanced in force, glamour, and power.

    AT HAMPTON ROADS on 22 February, Roosevelt stood for the last time as Commander-in-Chief on the bridge of the
Mayflower
. He strained his one good eye through a pair of naval binoculars, trying to glimpse what everyone around him saw clearly: distant white superstructures looming through gray rain and fog. “Here they are,” he eventually shouted, feeling rather than seeing, as the sound of twenty-eight ships’ bands playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” grew in volume, to the rhythmic crash of cannon. The music, the gunpowder, the echelons of saluting bluejackets: all were for him, and for history.
    “That is the answer to my critics,” he said, his top hat glistening in the wet air. “Another chapter is complete, and I could not ask a finer concluding scene for my administrations.”

    “ I COULD NOT ASK A FINER CONCLUDING SCENE FOR MY ADMINISTRATIONS.”
The Great White Fleet returns from its round-the-world trip, 22 February 1909
(photo credit 32.2)

EPILOGUE
4 March 1909

    AT A TIME when he was still able to joke about his future, William Howard Taft used to say, “It will be a cold day when I go into the White House.”
    He was right, although he could not have imagined how cold.His Inauguration was the most arctic any Washingtonian could remember. For many of the visitors whose trains managed to scrabble into town, along rails carbuncled with rock-hard ice, it was the worst weather they had known in theirlives. A brutal west wind drove in billows of snow. Branchloads of ice crashed from trees, some bringing down tangled decorations. Ice sheaths snapped telephone and telegraph wires, cutting off communications with the rest of the country. Freezing rain sent automobiles careening, carriage horses sliding, and streetcars to unscheduled terminals. And the sullen sky discharged such further quantities of snow that groundsmen gave up any attempt to keep the eastern Capitol plaza clear. At eleven o’clock, spectators were told that the swearing-in ceremony was being transferred indoors. Arriving guests had to find their own way to the Senate chamber, and their own seats when they got there. The rough pine platform built for the swearing-in whitened slowly as it stood abandoned, bare of all bunting.

    “I KNEW THERE WOULD BE A BLIZZARD WHEN I WENT OUT.”
Roosevelt and Taft arriving at the Capitol, 4 March 1909
(photo credit epl.1)
    “I knew there would be a blizzard when I went out,” said Roosevelt, with grim satisfaction.
    He left the White House with Taft at ten o’clock, and they were driven to the Capitol in a twelve-team equipage whipped by flying snow. Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with empty bleachers. A few hundred well-wishers straggled along the sidewalks, walking to keep warm, easily keeping up with the presidential carriage. They cheered occasionally—“Oh, you Teddy!”—but their mood seemed more sad than celebratory. Roosevelt kept dropping his window and waving at them until the snow clouds forced him to raise it again.
    Progress was so