The kind of thing the President wanted to know

Several of these notes have been about brevity in writing. Virginia Woolf was a master at getting to the heart of the matter.

Theodore Roosevelt was a complicated character, but Woolf caught him, in a paragraph of fewer than 100 words:

When he was President of the United States a cowboy came up to him and said, “Mr. President, I have been in jail a year for killing a gentleman.” “How did you do it?” asked the President, meaning to inquire as to the circumstances. “Thirty-eight on a forty-five frame,” replied the man, thinking that the only interest the President had was that of a comrade who wanted to know with what kind of tool the trick was done. No other President, it is said, from Washington to Wilson would have drawn that answer.

To know that anecdote is to know Roosevelt. It’s from Woolf’s essay “Body and Brain.”