Meantime he grew steadily stronger among the people, not only of his own State but of the country, for he was well known throughout the West, and there they were watching eagerly to see how the ranchman and colonel of Rough Riders, who had touched both their hearts and their imagination, was faring as governor of New York. The office he held is always regarded as related to the Presidency, and this, joined to his striking success as governor, brought him into the presidential field wherever men speculated about the political future It was universally agreed that McKinley was to be renominated, and so the talk turned to making Roosevelt Vice President. A friend wrote to him in the summer of 1899 as to this drift of opinion, then assuming serious proportions. "Do not attempt," he said, "to thwart the popular desire. You are not a man nor are your close friends men who can plan, arrange, and manage you into office. You must accept the popular wish, whatever it is, follow your star, and let the future care for itself. It is the tradition of our politics, and a very poor tradition, that the Vice Presidency is a shelf. It ought to be, and there is no reason why it should not be, a stepping-stone. Put there by the popular desire, it would be so to you." This view, quite naturally, did not commend itself to Governor Roosevelt at the moment. He was doing valuable work in New York; he was deeply engaged in important reforms which he had much at heart and which he wished to carry through; and the Vice Presidency did not attract him. A year later he was at Philadelphia, a delegate at large from his State, with his mind unchanged as to the Vice Presidency, while his New York friends, anxious to have him continue his work at Albany, were urging him to refuse. Senator Platt, for obvious reasons, wished to make him Vice President, another obstacle to his taking it. Roosevelt forced the New York delegation to agree on some one else for Vice President, but he could not hold the convention, nor could Senator Hanna, who wisely accepted the situation. Governor Roosevelt was nominated on the first ballot, all other candidates withdrawing. He accepted the nomination little as he liked it. Thus when it came to the point he instinctively followed his star and grasped the unvacillating hand of destiny. Little did he think that destiny would lead him to the White House through a tragedy which cut him to the heart. He was on a mountain in the Adirondacks when a guide made his way to him across the forest with a telegram telling him that McKinley, the wise, the kind, the gentle, with nothing in his heart but good will to all men, was dying from a wound inflicted by an anarchist murderer, and that the Vice President must come to Buffalo at once. A rapid night drive through the woods and a special train brought him to Buffalo. McKinley was dead before he arrived, and that evening Governor Roosevelt was sworn in as President of the United States.