The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-08-12
THE ROARING NIGHTINGALE.

E Bottom could roar you as gently as Ia nightingale If need be. to save the Duchess and ladies from fright. So can Roosevelt. King Demos has been alarmed by his big stick roaring per formances and now Bottom would show he is not such terrible animal after all. He is roaring with gentleness. He will not interfere with the beef packers strike. nor in the Colorado strike; he will not permit a delegation of engineers to call on him for fear of misconstruction and sends the conven- ton word at Richmond, T am already a member of the Locomotive Firemen's s
 Brotherhood and am sure you will
 understand my heart Is in the right place. Just now. however, I am lying very low. playing Bottom. roaring like q nightingale"
 So also in our foreign relations, just now warming up in way that would delight the heart Of . warrior Presi- dent in ordinary times, he is as meek as Moses and leaves that bold bad man, John Hay. to issue orders to the na- val commanders to speed here and there to guard American interests. They are careful to give it out in each instance at the White House, that Hay has persuaded" the President to allow him, Hay. to direct that this or that naval demonstration should be made It is Hay who must looN after our troubles in Venezuela. in Columbia, in San Domingo and in Turkey. Hay is taking all the responsibility. It al- ready seems an age since the President himself caused the rococo dispatch to he sent to Chadwick at Tangiers: so absolutely quiescent has be become, so lamblike and mild. There Is no little shrewdness in this latest electioneering dodge of the President. If throughout the cam paign, the spellbinders on the Repub- lfcan side can point to a sedate, sub dued young man sitting in the White House. some voters may be deceived as to his real character and may take his previous aerobatic performances to have been out of character, and that the true Roosevelt is as he presents himself. a candidate shortly to be vot- ed for. calm and unrufied as a May morning.
 We take leave to doubt his ability to maintain himself in his new role, for what will seem to him to be an inter- minable while. three months. He has actually abandoned his singie-stick ex- ercises and his practice in Japanese wrestling. He Is striving to contain his nerves. with horseback riding and tennis playing. Will these suffice? Hardly. He will be forced into more violent courses. or he will literally burst.
 The lesson of his present seemliness of conduct. if it continues until the election. is that by an exertion of will, that must be in the highest degree painful to a man of his physical make up. he has bound himself down, has put away all swelling, clustering, bragging and threatening habits of mind for the delusion and deception of the American people. If he should chance to be elected, he would after being thus corked tightly up for four months. explode like magazine and send the government careering the Lord only knows where. His present Is a wholly unnatural role and tho reckless and dangerous man win cer- tainly be manifest in December, wheth- CT he is successful or not. That man was plainly manifest until he decided to undertake an old part in an old play, Bottom, the weaver.
 grant you. friends. if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits. they would have no more discre- tion than to hang us: but l will ag- gravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightin- gale.