lost his voice completely, Guild had to speak for him. Up to
election day in November, the Republicans did not feel confident,
but when the votes were counted, McKinley had a plurality of over
830,000, and beat Bryan by more than a million.

By an absurd and bungling practice, which obtains in our
political life, the Administration elected in November does not
take office until the following March, an interval which permits
the old Administration, often beaten and discredited, to continue
in office for four months after the people have turned it out. As
we have lately seen, such an Administration does not experience a
death-bed repentance, but employs the moratorium to rivet upon
the country the evil policies which the people have repudiated.
This interval Roosevelt spent in finishing his work as Governor
of New York State, and in removing to Washington. Then he had a
foretaste of the life of inactivity to which the Vice-Presidency
doomed him.

After being sworn in on March 4, 1901, his only stated duty was
to preside over the Senate, but as the Senate did not usually sit
during the hot weather, he had still more leisure thrust upon
him. Of course, he could write, and there never was a time, even
at his busiest, when he had not a book, or addresses, or articles
on the stocks. But writing alone was not now sufficient to
exercise his very vigorous faculties. Perhaps, for the first time
in his life, he may have had a foreboding of what ennui meant. He
consulted Justice White, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
whether it would be proper for him to enroll himself as a student
in the Washington Law School. Justice White feared that this
might be regarded as a slight to the dignity of the