how he reduced shrewd slanderers to confusion. The first was
Charles Henry Grosvenor, an influential Republican Congressman
from Ohio, familiarly known as the "Gentle Shepherd of Ohio,"
because of his efforts to raise the tariff on wool for the
benefit of the owners of the few thousand sheep in that State. A
Congressional Committee was investigating the Civil Service
Commission and Roosevelt asked that Grosvenor, who had attacked
it, might be summoned. Grosvenor, however, did not appear, but
when he learned that Roosevelt was going to his Dakota ranch for
a vacation, he sent word that he would come. Nevertheless, this
gallant act failed to save him, for Roosevelt canceled his ticket
West, and confronted Grosvenor at the investigation. The Gentle
Shepherd protested that he had never said that he wished to
repeal the Civil Service Law; whereupon Roosevelt read this
extract from one of his speeches: "I will vote not only to strike
out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law."
When Roosevelt pointed out the inconsistency of the two
statements, Grosvenor declared that they meant the same thing.

Being caught thus by one foot in Roosevelt's mantrap, he quickly
proceeded to be caught by the other. He declared that Rufus P.
Putnam, one of the candidates in dispute, had never lived in
Grosvenor's Congressional district, or even in Ohio. Then Mr.
Roosevelt quoted from a letter written by Grosvenor: "Mr. Rufus
P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district, and has relatives
living there now." With both feet caught in the man-trap, the
Gentle Shepherd was suffering much pain, but Truth is so great a
stranger to spoilsmen that he found difficulty in getting within
speaking distance of her. For he protested, first, that he never
wrote the letter, next, that he had forgotten that he wrote it,