President McKinley, who was the gentlest and kindest of men, did
not die immediately from the bullet wound, but lingered for about
a week. Vice-President Roosevelt joined him in Buffalo, and came
to believe, from the reports of the doctors, that the President
would get well. So he returned to his family who were in the
Adirondacks. A few days later, while Mr. Roosevelt was mountain-
climbing, a message came that the President was worse and that the
Vice-President must come at once to Buffalo. He drove fifty miles
by night, in a buckboard down the mountain roads, took a special
train, and arrived in Buffalo the next afternoon.

Mr. McKinley was dead, and Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of
office as President. He was under forty-three years of age, the
youngest man who had ever become President.

It is important to note his first act. It was to insist that all
of Mr. McKinley's Cabinet remain in office. Thus he secured for
the continued service of the Nation, some of its ablest men: Mr.
Hay, one of the most accomplished Secretaries of State we have
ever had, and Mr. Root, Secretary of War, and afterwards Secretary
of State, whose highly trained legal mind placed him at the head
of his profession.

A test of a great man, as well as a test of a modest man, in the
true sense, is whether he is willing to have other able and
eminent men around him as his assistants and fellow-workers. The
most remarkable instances of this among our Presidents were
Washington and Lincoln. The latter appointed men not because they
admired him, or were personally agreeable to him; indeed some of