The new President fully appreciated the deplorable circumstances under which he became the head of the nation. He issued this proclamation: “In this hour of deep and national bereavement I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely and without variance the policy of President McKinley, for the peace, prosperity and honor of our beloved country.” Roosevelt kept this pledge to the letter. Afterward Senator Platt, with true political sagacity, claimed credit for his insistence upon the nomination for the Vice-Presidency, since it had led to Roosevelt becoming President of the United States. Those, however, who knew of the anxiety of the New York politicians to get rid of Roosevelt as a factor in state politics looked the other way and winked. XII First Years in the Presidency When Roosevelt was a member of the New York Legislature, Andrew D. White, President of Cornell College, who had been keenly watching his career, remarked to his class: “Young gentlemen, some of you will enter public life. I call your attention to Theodore Roosevelt, now in our legislature. He is on the right road to success. It is dangerous to predict a future for a young man, but let me tell you that if any man of his age was ever pointed straight for the Presidency, that man is Theodore Roosevelt.” Mr. White was not alone in his opinion. George W. Curtis, who was then editor of Harper’s “Easy Chair,” thus answered a man who sneered at the youth and obscurity of Roosevelt: [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, HARRIS & EWING ROOSEVELT’S CABINET IN 1908] “You will know more, sir, later; a good deal more, or I am much in error. Young? Why, he is just out of school almost, yet he is a force to be reckoned with in New York. Later the nation will be criticizing or praising him. While respectful to the gray hairs and experience of his elders, not one of them can move him an iota from convictions as to men and measures once formed and rooted. He will not truckle nor cringe; he seems to court opposition to the point of being somewhat pugnacious. His political life will probably be turbulent; but he will be a figure, not a figure-head, in future developments--or if not, it will be because he gives up politics altogether.” These opinions from men who knew Roosevelt all his life go to show that his course to the Presidency was clearly marked for him from the time he entered New York politics. Jeremiah Curtin, the historian and philosopher, was another person who early became impressed with the idea that Roosevelt was a dynamic force for the highest place in the land. Curtin, in his “History of the Mongols,” wrote thus of seeing Roosevelt as a Civil Service Commissioner: “All at once, in the large room before us, I saw a young man, alert to his duties and perfectly confident. There was no one else in the apartment. I told (Congressman) Greenhalge to look at him.