The Holbrook news., 1910-09-09

these keen eyed detectives are al to prevent annoyance to the presi- dent as well as to guard him from danger. Several Washington police men are also on duty at the White House and it is hard for a person who has a scheme to unfold to the presi- dent to reach even the outer offices of the executives headquarters.
 If MT Roosevelt, for instance. is not richer than Rockefeller and the Roths- childs rolled into one, it Is entirely his own fault, or, perhaps, that of the guards who stood between him and the fortune about to be offered him by an inventor from Colorado, who dropped In one day for the sole purpose of let ting the president in on the ground floor of a corporation which he was forming for the purpose of exploiting a patent to utilize gravity.
 Gravity, not steam or electricity. was the coming power. It was to run the world-railways, mills, foundries, all the great industries were to be revolutionized by it. Of course, he wanted the president to help him in such trifling matters as the forming of his corporation and the securing of his patents. Particularly he was to compel the commissioner of patents to Issue to him the necessary patents on his invention.
 Yet another, a New Yorker, had a novel scheme to frustrate the ice trust, In which he wanted the presidents help. He wanted the president to make congress appropriate enough money to cut the ice from around the pole. and to bring 1t to the United States on war vessels, for distribution in the various cities where the ice trust was opera ting. This, he thought, would lower the price of ice during the summer, when prohibitive prices were charged.
 That man was regarded as decidedly In the category of harmless" cranks. It would not have occurred to any one that the president would have been in any serious danger if his visitor had succeeded in forcing his way into his official presence. But after being taken to St. Elizabeth's he developed the most violent form of mania, and died within 36 hours, exhausted by his paroxysms.
 Indeed, the question of dealing with these people is always a difficult one. For no man on earth can tell just when a crank is harmless. Just when an un- balanced mind will forsake the gro- tesque for the homicidal is thing that even the expert alienist would hate to have to decide in advance. What seems at one moment a humorous situation, to be dealt with in a spirit of gentle cajolery, may in a moment become se- rious even to the verge of tragedy. The nimsiest excuse will, in nine cases out of ten, suffice to turn these would-be guests of the president from their pur- pose. but there are cases which in the twinkling of an eye develop from in- sane obstinacy into insane fury.
 Take, for instance, the case of a Swede, regarded by the authorities as about the most dangerous that ever came under their notice. He came to Washington in the spring of 1904, jourueying most of the way from his home in Minneapolis in a freight car He made his way to the White House and demanded an audience with the president, that he might lay before him certain facts of an alleged perse- cution.
 He was led through the basement of the White House to the guard room at