"I ask you to look at our declaration and hear and read our platform about social and industrial justice and then, friends, vote for the progressive ticket without regard to me, without regard to my personality, for only by voting for that platform can you be true to the cause of progress throughout this union." (Applause.) All through his talk, it was evident that his physicians feared his injury had been more serious than he was willing to admit. That a man with a bullet embedded in his body could stand up there and insist on giving the audience the speech which they had come to hear was almost incredible and it was plain the physicians as well as the other friends of the colonel on the stage were greatly alarmed. Col. Roosevelt, however, would have none of it. "Sit down, sit down," he said to those who, when he faltered once or twice, half rose to come towards him. He insisted that he was having a good time in spite of his injury. Finally a motherly looking woman, a few rows of seats back from the stage rose and said, "Mr. Roosevelt, we all wish you would be seated." To this the colonel quickly replied: "I thank you, madam, but I don't mind it a bit." To those on the stage, who wished he would adopt the suggestion of being seated, he said: "Good gracious if you saw me in the saddle at the head of my troops with a bullet in me you would not mind." The only time Col. Roosevelt gave up and took a seat was when he came to a quotation from La Follette's weekly which paid him a tribute of praise for his work as president. This was read by Assemblyman T. J. Mahon, while the colonel rested. At the conclusion of the reading Col. Roosevelt said that he was the same man now that he was then. He had not been president since 1909 so that what he was described as being then he was now. T. J. Mahon read this editorial from La Follette's magazine of March 13, 1909: "Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a large extent against its will. He has played a large part of the world's work for the past seven years. The activities of his remarkably forceful personality have been so manifold that it will be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race. He is said to think that the three great things done by him are the undertaking of the construction of the Panama canal and its rapid and successful carrying forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending around the world of the fleet.