Roosevelt. Nothing interfered with that. In the season he
played tennis with some of the large group of companions whom he
gathered round him, officials high and low, foreign Ambassadors
and Cabinet Ministers and younger under-secretaries who were
popularly known as the "Tennis Cabinet." There were fifty or more
of them, and that so many should have kept their athletic vigor
into middle age, and even beyond it, spoke well for the physique
of the men of official Washington at that time.
At Oyster Bay Roosevelt had instituted "hiking." He and the young
people and such of the neighbors as chose would start from
Sagamore Hill and walk in a bee-line to a point four or five
miles off. The rule was that no natural impediment should cause
them to digress or to stop. So they went through the fields and
over the fences, across ditches and pools, and even clambered up
and down a haystack, if one happened to be in the way, or through
a barnyard. Of course they often reached home spattered with mud
or even drenched to the skin from a plunge into the water, but
with much fun, a livelier circulation, and a hearty appetite to
their credit.
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