The ordinary traveler, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package," Roosevelt sneered.
The author points out strikingly different reactions to calamity. While many passengers of a devastating shipwreck were thankful to be alive, future presidential assassin Charles Guiteau saw his being spared as proof of his exceptionalism rather than of the grace from which he benefited.
Dr. Lister, who treated the wounded Pres. Garfield, had been so stung by the medical establishment's reaction to his embrace of African-American doctors that he, in response, refused to do part from the status quo enough to considering using antiseptic techniques.