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THROUGH SEVEN YEARS OF THE CRUELEST JOB IN THE WORLD President Roosevelt has kept his ebullient gaiety, an excellent digestion, and the ability to sleep like a child. His physical record is amazing in the light of rumors that persisted even in 1932 after he had served four years as governor of New York and had plunged into a furious national campaign. He had no physical stamina, the whisper went; he was a weakling because of the infantile paralysis that had crippled him. Two weeks would cover the time he has spent in bed, and then only with minor ailments, a touch of grippe or flare-up of the frontal sinus. Zest for living is one of his most conspicuous characteristics, and he has enjoyed to the full a job that ruined and broke so many other men.

And this in a period when one crisis has followed another at home and abroad, and turbulent quarrels have raged around the President. He has worked long days and often far into the night with little peace.

All of which may help to explain why he has flourished. He rises to an emergency as a trout to the fly. It is a test of his powers that he has never failed to welcome. Again and again that is the picture that emerges from his years in the White House. A torrential flood is raging down the Ohio. Lights are burning in his oval study although it is nearly two o'clock in the morning; maps and reports are on the President's desk; around him are secretaries, officers from the War Department; he is talking on the phone with a midwestern governor, eager voiced, making instant decisions. Or war threatens Europe. Secretary Hull and Under-Secretary Welles are in his bedroom before dawn; Ambassador Bullitt is calling from Paris. In Franklin Roosevelt there is fireman's blood, and he responds to the three-alarm bell like a veteran.

Only once was this healthy extrovert stopped. After the outbreak of war in Europe, last September, rumor had him "jittery" and those who work with him from day to day described him as "grim." Two months passed before he was able to throw off that grimness. After Congress approved his neutrality bill, he went to Warm Springs with the utter relaxation that is one of the virtues of a healthy nervous system. Now he has regained the vibrant self-confidence which so delights his admirers and disturbs his doubters.

Ten years ago, as he was about to enter his second campaign for governor of New York, Mr. Roosevelt applied for a large amount of life insurance for the benefit of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. He was forty-eight years old. After a careful examination twenty-two companies offered to insure his life for a million dollars. He took $560,000 of this amount. The President could pass the same examination today with just as high a rating, in the opinion of his personal physician.

Mr. Roosevelt's Day

THE PRESIDENT'S DAY BEGINS BETWEEN 8:30 AND 9 WITH A leisurely breakfast in bed. His secretaries and intimate advisers are likely to be present, and perhaps a member of his cabinet. Should one of the grandchildren be a guest at the White House, the early visitor will find Franklin III or little Sara in the President's bed, playing with his cigarette holder, his glasses, his watch. Later he dresses with the aid of a valet and is pushed in a wheelchair to his desk in the office building.

Appointments begin at 10 or 10:30 and go through to 5 or 5:30, with a luncheon conference over trays brought to the President's desk. He may invite his last visitor to swim with him in the pool that was built when he came to the White House. With a powerful backstroke, he swims there four or five times a week. Customarily the swim is followed by a thorough massage. The paralysis which crippled the President did not destroy all the muscles of his lower body and the healthy muscle groups are given special attention. This massage is an excellent restorative, often enabling the President to appear fresh and vigorous before an important audience at the end of a tiring day.

If there are no social functions in the evening, he may have further conferences in his study. Or he may read, or work at his stamp collection. At formal receptions he goes quietly or to his own quarters when he has greeted the last guest, leaving Mrs. Roosevelt to do the honors for the remainder of the evening. This is one of the definite advantages of his infirmity. To relieve the strain of standing for the hour required to shake a thousand hands, supporting himself on the arm of an aide, the President last winter had constructed a special chair that permits him to receive in a half-standing, half-sitting position.

His personal physician, Dr. Ross T. McIntire, has never attempted to regiment his famous patient's life. From his immaculate office in the White House basement he keeps a watchful eye, but the President regulates his own habits. It has never been necessary to prescribe a diet. He eats heartily and enjoys his food, yet his weight has not varied more than five pounds, between 182 and 187. He is fond of game and fish. Foods ordinarily considered indigestible appeal to him, particularly terrapin. Sometimes the President takes a cocktail before dinner. Receiving dinner guests informally in his study, he may demand, "What'll you have?" But if he has a cocktail then, he takes nothing to drink after dinner.

Presidential Cruise

DR. MCINTIRE INSISTS THAT THE PRESIDENT GET AWAY FROM Washington for a complete change at regular intervals. His associates marvel at Mr. Roosevelt's ability at such times to forget the concerns that are ordinarily his. On his recent cruise, his companions often would find him in his quarters, in the middle of the morning, reading a detective story, working with his stamps or just loafing. The business of the day, forwarded by radio from the White House, was dispensed with in not more than half an hour.

The President might sit in the sun alone on the boat deck, and lunch alone in his quarters. In the afternoon there would be fishing. The President's friends brag about his skill at deep-sea fishing and recall how in 1935 he brought in a 237-pound shark, alone, Dr. McIntire says proudly, and without the harness that deep-sea fishermen wear. His shoulder and arm muscles are amazingly well developed.

Besides providing a healthy outing, his cruises renew for the President his strong attachment to the navy. On this latest cruise he carried out the mysterious scouting operations that he hinted at just before embarking. If anything was needed to make the trip perfect it was this last touch, the sense of participation in the actual work of the navy at a time of crisis.

Returning to Washington, he faced his first press conference with the old challenge, his tanned face frequently crinkling into a laugh, his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. Obviously he was still enjoying his job, taking almost boyish pleasure in the prerogatives of power, in the drama, the excitement and the mystery. One can readily believe that he once said to a friend: "Wouldn't you be President if you could? Wouldn't anybody?"

A Born Showman

AN IMPORTANT ENTRY ON THE ASSET SIDE OF THE PRESIDENT'S political ledger is his flair for the dramatic. He has the actor's sense of a crowd; and here, too, his infirmity has been an advantage. He never walks on the platform as an ordinary man would. The scene is carefully stage-man-aged, of necessity, so that at the climactic moment he appears, as the god from the machine, radiant and smiling. A veteran trouper, he spaces his laughs and knows when to expect the rewarding applause.

But indignant critics who damned him in 1936 for "putting on an act" were mistaken. It is not merely an act. Behind the smooth flow of his public speech is the facile response of a ready emotional apparatus. His critics on the right have damned him, too, for his inconsistency, forgetting that he is a consummate politician who knows very well that consistency is a rare luxury. Consistency in his objectives is what Mr. Roosevelt himself has claimed.

This self-confident cavalier takes ideas, phrases, jokes, even prepared speeches, from the brilliant men around him; his final manuscript may hear the imprint of four or five hands besides his own. He is full of quips and pranks even in a time such as the present. A young New Dealer gets a kidding memorandum about a minor illness that has kept him at home, written in the President's hand and signed "FDR, M.D." In some ways a traditionalist, he yet loves the drama of surprise. He abandoned diplomatic formality and received new envoys in a business suit seated behind his desk, waiving the customary stilted speech of welcome. Often he seems determined to be an impish paradox.

During the September crisis he went for a weekend the Presidential yacht, Potomac, the guests being two elderly friends of his mother from Hyde Park, the brother of one of these ladies, a schoolgirl relative of his wife, her friend and the friend's father. before they returned the President had conversed with each on the subject dearest to his or her heart. One of the guests found himself talking with one of the most influential men in contemporary life, at a moment when the world was in flames, about the respective merits of range and blooded cattle. The tactful host had learned that his guest was rancher from Wyoming.

He enjoys the company of men whose conversation crackles with ideas or glows with wit -- Tommy Corcoran, Justice Frankfurter, Adolf Berle, Archibald MacLeish, Justice Douglas. Glibly he turns from one to another roaming diverse fields of specialized knowledge. Once while discussing the sinking of a foreign merchant vessel the President remarked: "I should say that that occurred very close to such-and-such a rock which at high tide is at least twenty feet out of water." A naval aide ventured that the rock in question was submerged even at low tide. They looked at the charts, and the President was proved correct

The circle of his intimates has remained remarkably constant. Perhaps the dominant figure in his life, his mother, has been at the side of her only child during all the history-making ceremonials in which he has participated. Her charm, her humor, her energy are in this son who was so carefully watched, so carefully reared. They are of the Hudson Valley aristocracy, and in mother and son there is an easy and natural acceptance of a special place in the world.

First Lady

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT HAS DEVELOPED A stature almost equal to that of her husband. Perhaps his life in the White House would have been calmer with a less active First Lady, but it would also have been less full of human interests, sympathy and generosity. His aides sometimes complain about the random people who enter the White House "by the back door," thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt. To his wife's friends and acquaintances the President lends a patient ear, having learned that often they have things to report about America which do not come through official channels.

Between husband and wife there is obviously a deep loyalty. Naturally two such busy people have very little time alone with each other. Customarily Mrs. Roosevelt waits until her husband is in his study at night, or just before he is to retire, to have a quiet talk with him.

The President was deeply troubled over the recent divorce of his eldest son, Jimmy. He was devoted to Jimmy's wife, the former Betsey Cushing. Her intelligence, her sensitive charm, had endeared this daughter-in-law to him. In the year of Jimmy's secretaryship she was seen often with the President, and the legend grew up that when he is "in a Dutch mood," a little upset and unhappy, it is Betsey who could bring him round to gaiety again. "They're free and twenty-one," he has said of his children and their public pursuit of happiness. "There doesn't seem to be anything I can do."

Among the small group working in the White House with him, Marguerite LeHand, his secretary for more than twenty years, would certainly come first. Handsome, dressed always with meticulous care, quiet and self-effacing, "Missy" is perfect in her role. To her the President entrusts his most personal correspondence and his private business affairs. "Missy" has her own suite in the White House-living room, bedroom and bath. To her phone the switchboard operator has routed the transatlantic calls from Bullitt and Kennedy in the watches of the night. If "Missy" approves, then the call is put on the phone bedside the President's bed.

Fight Your Own Battles

THE NEW DEAL PACE LAID LOW ONE OF THE PRESIDENT'S close friends. Harry L. Hopkins is convalescing in the quiet berth of Secretary of Commerce, regaining some of the energy he threw into the job of spending billions for emergency relief. His friendship with the Roosevelts illustrates still another facet of the President's character. Hopkins is the blithe reformer, applying the social worker's formula to broader fields of government with a tart self-confidence which Mr. Roosevelt admires. Then, too, the relief administrator demonstrated that he could take punishment. Whether the messes he occasionally found himself in were of his own or his boss's making, Hopkins stood his ground. And the President rewarded him with his friendship, heaping one kindness after another on the sick man and his motherless daughter. But for those who dump their problems in his lap the President has only irritation and annoyance; the habit of running to the White House with big and little troubles ranks almost with stupidity in his catalogue of sins.

Beyond the circle of family, friends and close co-workers is the whole range of American life. Captains and kings have sat at his desk or dinner table, and he has developed clever techniques for handling them. Here is shaggy-maned John L. Lewis, come to pour out his grievances. He sits down and the President begins to talk, easily, graciously, so that the visitor hardly gets the traditional word in edgewise. Time is winging. Fifteen minutes is such a short space of time. Mr. Lewis finds himself outside, angrier perhaps but none the wiser.

Patience is one of the President's weapons, and his famous charm is another. I have seen men definitely hostile come out from under the Rooseveltian sun with a bewildered look. "He certainly is attractive, isn't he?" they say as though announcing a profound discovery.

In this critical year of 1940 the man in the White House seems to have few worries. Certainly financial worry, which has plagued many Presidents toward the end of their time in Washington, gives Mr. Roosevelt no concern. All his life he has had the comfortable cushion of a private income; not large but sufficient to enable him to do the things he wants to do. In the White House the Roosevelts have stinted neither themselves nor their guests. Those who keep close watch on such things are of the opinion that his annual travel and entertainment allowance of $25,000 has been much too small to cover these items in the Roosevelt budget. It is expensive to entertain royalty; and half a dozen heads of state have stopped at the White House, besides innumerable citizens of every kind and rank. But even were his salary and private income insufficient to make up the entertainment-travel deficit, and he had dipped into his capital, this optimist would not be concerned. He knows very well what his earning power -- as writer or editor, for example -- will be when he becomes a private citizen again. To say nothing of the earning power which his wife has established for herself.

Driving Power

AMONG THOSE CLOSE TO HIM THERE ARE TWO THEORIES about the man. One is that, as optimist, as pragmatist, he does everything that he believes it humanly possible to do. Faced with a given situation, he is all for trying some line of action. Impulsive, even impetuous, he wants to know immediately what can be done. He then moves as far as he can to improve his world, to bring peace, to do whatever may be the job ahead of him. Having done this his conscience is clear. He has trained himself not to worry about what he cannot alter. And he has a serene trust in his own judgment.

The other theory is more complex. In his heart of hearts he is a sad man, having seen through the illusions and futilities of his time. Nevertheless, he has the courage to be cheerful and to do good in the sight of God. This theory endows Mr. Roosevelt with the humility of true greatness, the humility that few men have retained in their upward rise.

Any theory is, of course, too simple to explain this extraordinary figure whose shadow falls across our time. History may add something to our present knowledge of him, the history to which Mr. Roosevelt himself appears so eager to entrust his reputation. The remedies of this ardent doctor-at-large may have been too superficial for the disease he sought to cure. Or his dosages may have been too potent for a skeptical patient. The coming years will aid in a final judgment. Meanwhile, there is the democratic luxury of speculating on the character of this head of the greatest democracy in the world.