The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1910-04-18

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left Khartoum about 9 O'Clock
Thursday evening. At the station
was little crowd of men and
women to say farewell. They had
come direct from the dinner table,
the women in their low-necked
gowns, and the men in evening
clothes. There was Slatin Pa
shaw. Mrs. Asser, Clayton Bey,
Bond Bey, and the rest, and they
pressed around the Roosevelt car
to shake the colonel's hand and
give "three American cheers"
1t was pretty picture. A
might like June. Goodness after a
blistering day. A sky without a
cloud. The river dark and cool
and shimmering with the lights of
the embankment road and the pal
ace on the other side. The blacks
in their white turbans and flowing
robes, and the yellow Egyptians in
uniform ana red tarboushes
seemed especially dressed to give
color to the scene.
"Goodby. 1t has indeed been
a pleasure!"
How often had I heard those
words addressed to the caller at
the white house! And how sincere
they seem now out here, repeated
for the hundred thousandth time!
What a genius the man has to
make each man or woman feel in
the brief meeting and those few
words that he or she has been
singled out and distinguished by
a peculiar sense of pleasure con-
ferred upon the colonel by the
meeting!
Nor is 1t merely acting. Moth
ing but real interest-interest in
the human proposition in all its
myriad phases-can make posi-
Bile these results. Roosevelt loves
people as he loves birds. He loves
to discover and to know every
sort. His interest is not limited
by class lines. One minute it may
be a Mohammedan multi, the next
the man from home; in both cases
1t is a fact that the meeting has
been genuine pleasure.
One of the men who came all
through with Roosevelt was tell
ing me of the enthusiasm which
our ex-president aroused among
the outlaws and poachers in the
kongo. In these days it would be
hard to find a more daredevil,
reckless lot of men than these ele-
plant hunters, who defy govern
ments and risk 20 years in penal
servitude to carry on their con-
traband trade in ivory. They don't
care much for conventional great
ness, and are quick to discern, and
have fine scorn for the molly
coddle. The leader of the gang,
an Irishman, who had been wreck
ed on the west coast, and had
reigned as king of a tribe of
blacks until deposed by Belgian
authority, summed up the senti-
ments of his fellows:
Hes too good to go back and
fuss around with civilized pink
teas. He's our sort. He ought to
stay with us and do something
worth WHILE"
Similarly, when Roosevelt was
leaving the mission station at
Gondokaro, some 1900 miles
above Khartoum, the transplanted
Kansan expressed the sentiment
of the mission workers in saying
that the ex-president really ought
to devote himself whole-heartedly
to the task for which he was so
we'll equipped, namely, the spread
of Christianity among the pagan
nations of the world"
l never saw crowd more taken
off its feet than the one which
listened to the colonel's speech at
the Sudan club in Khartoum-a
crowd made up largely Of British
and Egyptian officers, with a
sprinkling of German, Greeks and
arabs. For the moment the speak
ar was seeing things from the
'iewpoint of the civil servant and
military governor, the man at
once responsible for and not re-
sponsible for vague something
known as the home government,
which occasionally helps and gen.
orally hinders the man engaged
In the task Of bearing the white
mans burden. He spoke sympa-
of the trials, and appre-
ciatively of the work accomplish
ed by the young men who spend
their lives in these frontier forts,
and when all was over the colonel