By the way, there was one feast at the White House, which stands above all others in my memory, this was “The Bear Hunters’ Dinner.” I had been treated so kindly by my friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them at a hunters’ dinner at the White House. One December, I succeeded. There were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring riders, as first class citizens as could be found anywhere. No finer set of guests ever sat at meat in the White House. And among other game on the table, was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same guests. _Theodore Roosevelt_ (_Condensed_) HUNTING IN AFRICA _From Roosevelt’s Autobiography_ The African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that the few that I shot did not charge. A bull elephant, a vicious “rogue” which had been killing people in the native villages, did charge before being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards. Another bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle, in killing the bull I was after--the first wild elephant I had ever seen. The second bull came through the thick brush to my left, like a steam plow through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past him behind a tree. People have asked me how I felt on this occasion. My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of like experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment, a hunter is so very busy that he has no time to get frightened. He wants to get in his cartridges and try another shot. Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot, I mortally wounded at a few rods’ distance, and it charged with the utmost determination. Whereat I and my companion both fired, and, more by good luck than anything else, brought it to the ground just thirteen paces from where we stood. Another rhinoceros may or may not have been meaning to charge me; I have never been certain which. It heard us, and came at us through rather thick brush, snorting and tossing its head. I am by no means sure that it had fixedly hostile intentions. And indeed, with my present experience, I think it likely that if I had not fired, it would have flinched at the last moment, and either retreated or gone by me. But I am not a rhinoceros mind-reader, and its actions were such as to warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character. I stopped it with a couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it.