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Show PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. A , "PHOTOGRAPHIC" READER. I have no record of the President's recent reading.- but It Is not a secret that he Is "keeping up the pace." Seme of my friends are still ."reading at" Morley's three thick volumes of Gladstone's Glad-stone's VLdfe." The President, of course, read them promptly, gaining, I am told, not only a fresh, but a much more favorable view of the great leader, whom he confessed he had hitherto failed to understand. A "publisher not long ago told me that Mr. Roosevelt seemed to. have his eye on the authors of their house, and now and then a private letter, full of appreciation, would pass through the publisher's h,ands on the way to an author. In the thick of the campaign of 1904 I happened hap-pened to know that he re-read all of Macaulay's "History of England." all of Rhodes' "History of the United States" and Dickens ''Martin Chuzzle-wit." Chuzzle-wit." The othjr afternoon he was handed a new book a not very long dissertation on a matter of current interest. That evening he entertained a number of guests at dinner, and later there was a musical party at the White House, at which he was present. At luncheon, the next day, the giver said to him: "Mr. President, of course you have not had time to look at that book." "Oh. yes," said the President: "I have read it." Whereupon he proved that he had done so by his criticism of the work. One day, lately, a book of short stories was sent to him; almost by return re-turn mail came a letter thanking the sender and saying he had already en-Joyed en-Joyed the stories greatly in serial publication. pub-lication. . . . "How does he manage to do It?" All I know about this is that, in the first place, he has by nature or practice the faculty of extremely rapid reading. There are some men of letters aid "general readers' who never have -been able to acquire this art. Others can take in paragraphs or pages well-nigh at a glance. The President must be one of these photographic readers, who take almost instantly the impression of a whole paragraph along the' line with lightning rapidity, and leaping to the more important phrases as by inst'net. I have known the following to occur: A Congressman makes a statement to him and hands him a type-written paper. pa-per. . Almost immediately the President Presi-dent hands It back to him; whereupon the Congressman says deprecatlngly: "Mr. President, may I not leave this paper with you? I am anxious that you should read it." "But." answers-the President, I have read it: you can examine me In it, If you wish." |