I know I enjoyed it.

There was never a day when, looking back over the red and white men in my cavalcade, I did not know the thrill of the trail, and feel a little sorry that my Western adventures would thereafter have to be lived in spectacles.
Without desiring to dim the glory of any individual I can truthfully state that the expression "rough riders," which afterward became so famous, was my own coinage.

As I rode out at the front of my parade I would bow to the audience, circled about on the circus benches, and shout at the top of my voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce you to the rough riders of the world!" For three years we toured the United States with great success.

One day an Englishman, whose name I never learned, came to see me after the show.
"That is a wonderful performance," he told me.

"Here in America it meets with great appreciation, but you have no idea what a sensation it would be in the Old World, where such things are unheard of." That set me to thinking.