Frances Jenkins Olcott

On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means, than of the honest man who earns each day’s livelihood by that day’s sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing as between man and man.

Theodore Roosevelt

THE SQUARE DEAL

We of the great modern democracies, must strive unceasingly to make our several Countries, lands in which a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty.

And yet, we must judge rich man and poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and not on caste. And we must frown with the same stern severity on the mean and vicious envy which hates and would plunder a man because he is well off, and on the brutal and selfish arrogance, which looks down on and exploits the man with whom life has gone hard.

Theodore Roosevelt

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City, October 27, 1858

Was appointed Police Commissioner of New York City, 1895

Aided in establishing the Independence of Cuba, 1898

Was elected Governor of the State of New York, 1898

Served as President of the United States, 1901-1909

He died, January 6, 1919.

THE BOY WHO GREW STRONG

Not in a Log Cabin

Theodore Roosevelt, unlike Abraham Lincoln, was not born in a log cabin. On the contrary, he was born to wealth and position in the City of New York.

He was reared in an elegant home and educated in one of the famous universities of the Country. He read law, but he had no need to practise a profession. His father had retired from business, and there was no occasion for the son to take up a business career.

But Theodore Roosevelt preferred for himself a life of toil—the strenuous life.

Ill-health was the first and greatest of all his disadvantages. “When a boy,” said he, “I was pig-chested and asthmatic.”

From earliest infancy he was called to battle with asthma. It lowered his vitality and threatened his growth. His body was frail, but within was the conquering spirit. He determined to be strong like other boys.

In this, he had the loving help of gentle parents. On the wide back porch of their home in the City of New York, they fitted up a gymnasium, where he strove for bodily vigour with all his might. Although at the start, his pole climbing was very poor, he kept trying until he got to the top. He would carry his gymnastic exercises to the perilous verge of the window ledge, more to the alarm of the neighbours than of his own family.

In the Wide Out-of-Doors

Summer was the season of Roosevelt’s delight. Then he ceased to be a city boy. At his father’s country place on Long Island, he learned to run and ride, row, and swim. And when the long sleepless nights came, the father would take his invalid boy in his arms, wrap him up warmly, and drive with him in the free open air through fifteen or twenty miles of darkness.

The boy had his father’s love of the woods and the fields. He studied and classified the birds of the neighbourhood, until he knew their songs and plumage and nests. He and his young friends could be relied on to find the spot where the violets bloomed the earliest, and the trees on which the walnuts were most plentiful, as well as the pools where the minnows swarmed, and the favourite refuge of the coon.

He was taken to Europe, in the hope that it would benefit his health, “a tall thin lad with bright eyes and legs like pipestems.”

When at last, he was ready to go to college, he had vanquished his enemy, ill-health, and was ready to play a man’s part in life.

“I made my health what it is,” he said later, “I determined to be strong and well, and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard, I was able to take part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred, and I ran a great deal, and, although I never came in first, I got more out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.

Busting Broncos

After leaving college, young Roosevelt entered politics. Finally, between legislative sessions, he surrendered to his impulses and started for the Wild West.

He left the train in North Dakota at the little town of Medora. The young visitor from the East, sought out two hunters and told them that he wished to go buffalo hunting with them. And he did so, though hunting the buffalo then was no fancy pastime.

It was, in truth, a rare chance to see the Wild West in the last glow of its golden age. Soon it was all to vanish and pass into the most romantic chapter of American history.

Before his first visit was at an end, he had become a ranchman.

The young master of Elkhorn Ranch, brave, outspoken, and always ready to bear his full share of toil, and hardship, was not long in winning the respect and hearty good-will of the bluff, honest men of the Bad Lands.

After only a little experience in ranching, he learned to sit in his saddle and ride his horse like a life-long plainsman.

But he never pretended to any special fondness for a bucking bronco; and a story is told of a trick played on him by some friendly persons in Medora.

He was in town, waiting for a train that was to bring a guest from the East. While he was in a store, the jokers placed his saddle on a notoriously vicious beast, which they substituted for his mount.

When he came out, in haste to ride around to the railway station, he did not detect the deception.

Once, he was on the horse’s back, the bronco bucked and whirled to the amusement of the grinning villagers. But to their amazement, the young ranchman succeeded in staying on him and spurring him into a run.

Away they flew to the prairies, and soon back they raced in a cloud of dust and through the town. The friend from the East arrived, and joined the spectators, who waited to see if the young squire of Elkhorn ever would return.

In a little while, he was seen coming along the road at a gentle gait. And when he reached his starting point, he dismounted, with a smile of quiet mastery, from as meek a creature as ever stood on four legs.

He had no use, however, for a horse whose spirit ran altogether to ugliness. When he first went West, he doubted the theory of the natives that any horse was hopelessly bad.

For instance, there was one in the sod-roofed log stable of Elkhorn, who had been labelled The Devil. Roosevelt believed that gentleness would overcome Devil. The boys thought it might, if he should live to be seventy-five.

After much patient wooing, Devil actually let Roosevelt lay his hand on him and pat him. The boys began to think that possibly there was something in this new plan of bronco busting.

One day, however, when his gentle trainer made bold to saddle and mount him, Devil quickly drew his four hoofs together, leaped into the air, and came down with a jerk and a thud. Then he finished with a few fancy curves, that landed his disillusioned rider a good many yards in front of him.

Roosevelt sprang to his feet and on to the back of the animal. Four times he was thrown. Finally, the determined rider manoeuvred Devil out on to a quicksand where bucking is impossible. And, when at last, he was driven back to solid earth, he was like a lamb.

In this rough life of the range, the young ranchman conquered for ever the physical weaknesses of his youth, and put on that rude strength which enabled him to stand before the world, a model of vigorous manhood.

James Morgan (Arranged)

SAGAMORE HILL
His Home at Oyster Bay
From Roosevelt’s Autobiography

Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who, as Chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land, two centuries and a half ago.

The house stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over the Bay and the Sound.

We see the sun go down beyond long reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods near by. And, of course, in Winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the Bay and the Sound.

We love all the seasons; the snows and bare woods of Winter; the rush of growing things and the blossom-spray of Spring; the yellow grain, the ripening fruits, and tasseled corn, and the deep, leafy shades that are heralded by “the green dance of Summer”; and the sharp fall winds that tear the brilliant banners with which the trees greet the dying year.

The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights, we watch it from the piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall River boats as they steam steadily by. Now and then we spend a day on it, the two of us together in the light rowing skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an extra pair of oars. We land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit of white sand; while the sails of the coasting schooners gleam in the sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the waters....

Early in April, there is one hillside near us which glows like a tender flame with the white of the bloodroot. About the same time, we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus. And although we rarely pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul hungers for the northern Spring.

Then there are shadblow and delicate anemones about the time of the cherry blossoms. The brief glory of the apple orchards follows. And then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests with their radiance.

And so flowers follow flowers, until the springtime splendour closes with the laurel and the evanescent honey-sweet locust bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, and pale beach rosemary; and the goldenrod and the asters, when the afternoons shorten and we again begin to think of fires in the wide fireplaces.

Theodore Roosevelt

THE CHILDREN OF SAGAMORE HILL

Mrs. Roosevelt looked after the place itself. She supervised the farming, and the flower gardens were her especial care.

The children were now growing up, and from the time when they could toddle, they took their place—a very large place—in the life of the home. Roosevelt described the intense satisfaction he had in teaching the boys what his father had taught him.

As soon as they were large enough, they rode their horses, they sailed on the Cove and out into the Sound. They played boys’ games, and through him, they learned very young to observe nature.

In his college days, he had intended to be a naturalist, and natural history remained his strongest avocation. And so he taught his children to know the birds and animals, the trees, plants, and flowers of Oyster Bay and its neighbourhood. They had their pets—Kermit, one of the boys, carried a pet rat in his pocket.

Three things Roosevelt required of them all: obedience, manliness, and truthfulness.

William Roscoe Thayer

OFF WITH JOHN BURROUGHS
From Roosevelt’s Autobiography

One April, I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep, and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of the Park, the wild creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and tolerant of human presence.

In the Yellowstone, the animals seem always to behave as one wishes them to! It is always possible to see the sheep, and deer, and antelope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer than the smaller beasts.

In April, we found the elk weak after the short commons and hard living of Winter. Once, without much difficulty, I regularly rounded up a big band of them so that John Burroughs could look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much as I did.

The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl, the size of a robin, which we saw perched on the top of a tree, in mid-afternoon, entirely uninfluenced by the sun, and making a queer noise like a cork being pulled from a bottle.

I was rather ashamed to find how much better his eyes were than mine, in seeing the birds and grasping their differences.

Theodore Roosevelt

THE BIG STICK

I saw in Roosevelt a strong man, who had taken early to heart Hamlet’s maxim, and had steadfastly practised it:—

He himself summed up this part of his philosophy in a phrase which has become a proverb:—

More than once in his later years, he quoted this to me, adding, that it was precisely because this or that Power knew that he carried a big stick, that he was enabled to speak softly with effect.

William Roscoe Thayer (Condensed)

A-HUNTING TREES WITH JOHN MUIR
From Roosevelt’s Autobiography

When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the “big trees,” the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite with John Muir. Of course, of all people in the world, he was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite....

John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days’ trip.

The first night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in colour and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervour of the Middle Ages.

Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in the evening, and again with a burst of wonderful music at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. The hermit thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the flowers and the cliffs, everything. The only birds he noticed or cared for, were some that were very conspicuous, such as the water-ousels—always particular favourites of mine too.

The second night, we camped in a snow-storm on the edge of the caÑon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir. And next day, we went down into the wonderland of the Valley itself.

I shall always be glad that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir, and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs.

Theodore Roosevelt (Condensed)

THE BEAR HUNTERS’ DINNER
From Roosevelt’s Autobiography

When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport but also by the strange new birds and other creatures, and the trees and flowers I had not known before.

By the way, there was one feast at the White House, which stands above all others in my memory, this was “The Bear Hunters’ Dinner.”

I had been treated so kindly by my friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them at a hunters’ dinner at the White House.

One December, I succeeded. There were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring riders, as first class citizens as could be found anywhere. No finer set of guests ever sat at meat in the White House.

And among other game on the table, was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same guests.

Theodore Roosevelt (Condensed)

HUNTING IN AFRICA
From Roosevelt’s Autobiography

The African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that the few that I shot did not charge.

A bull elephant, a vicious “rogue” which had been killing people in the native villages, did charge before being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards.

Another bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle, in killing the bull I was after—the first wild elephant I had ever seen. The second bull came through the thick brush to my left, like a steam plow through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past him behind a tree.

People have asked me how I felt on this occasion. My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of like experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment, a hunter is so very busy that he has no time to get frightened. He wants to get in his cartridges and try another shot.

Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot, I mortally wounded at a few rods’ distance, and it charged with the utmost determination. Whereat I and my companion both fired, and, more by good luck than anything else, brought it to the ground just thirteen paces from where we stood.

Another rhinoceros may or may not have been meaning to charge me; I have never been certain which. It heard us, and came at us through rather thick brush, snorting and tossing its head. I am by no means sure that it had fixedly hostile intentions. And indeed, with my present experience, I think it likely that if I had not fired, it would have flinched at the last moment, and either retreated or gone by me. But I am not a rhinoceros mind-reader, and its actions were such as to warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character. I stopped it with a couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it.

The skins of all these animals which I thus killed are in the National Museum at Washington.

Theodore Roosevelt (Condensed)

THE EVER FAITHFUL ISLAND

Now, let us see what Theodore Roosevelt did to help establish Liberty in this Hemisphere.

It is a far cry from the Very Magnificent Don Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and discoverer of the West Indies and South America, to plain Theodore Roosevelt of Oyster Bay and citizen of the United States of North America.

Yet it was a very direct cry, a ringing call down through four centuries, a never ceasing plea for Liberty and safety.

And it was plain Colonel Theodore Roosevelt who, with his Rough Riders, helped to break the last link of the chain of Spanish domination in America. Its first link was unwittingly forged by Columbus, when he discovered the gold and pearls of the New World.

Through the many years, Cuba, the “Ever Faithful Island,” remained loyal to Spain, while her other American possessions declared their Independence, slipped from her grasp, and set up Republics.

But instead of taking warning from her American losses, Spain continued her policy of repression in Cuba.

Then there arose Cuban Patriots, among them, Gomez, Maceo, and Garcia, who struggled for Cuba’s Freedom. There were rebellions, insurrections, and war. Great and terrible were the sufferings of the People.

It is not possible here to give an account of the Cuban War for Independence. But after a terrific struggle, it was finally won in 1898, with the help of our United States. Thus Spain lost her last foothold in America, and withdrew from this hemisphere.

To-day, the Island of Cuba the “Ever-Faithful Island,” the “Pearl of the Antilles,” is a flourishing Republic with a world commerce. And during the World War, the red, white, and blue, single-bestarred Flag of Cuba, waved over a brave Cuban Army, the ally of the United States.

But as to Theodore Roosevelt’s part in liberating the Island, while he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley, we will let one of his biographers tell about it:—

THE COLONEL OF THE ROUGH RIDERS

Roosevelt had always felt the danger to the United States of maintaining a despicable or an inadequate Navy, and from the moment he entered the Navy Department, he set about pushing the construction of the unfinished vessels and of improving the quality of the personnel.

He was impelled to do this, not merely by his instinct to bring whatever he undertook up to the highest standard, but also because he had a premonition that a crisis was at hand, which might call the Country, at an instant’s notice, to protect itself with all the power it had.

Roosevelt was impressed by the insurrection in Cuba, which kept that Island in perpetual disorder. The cruel means, especially reconcentration and starvation, by which the Spaniards tried to put down the Cubans, stirred the sympathy of the Americans, and the number of those who believed that the United States ought to interfere in behalf of humanity, grew from month to month.

During his first year in office, Assistant Secretary Roosevelt busied himself with all the details of preparation. And all the while he watched the horizon towards Cuba, where the signs grew angrier and angrier.

But the young Secretary had to act with circumspection. President McKinley, desiring to keep the peace up to the very end, would not countenance any move which might seem to the Spaniards either a threat or an insult.

Early in the evening of February 15, 1898, the U. S. battleship Maine, peaceably riding at her moorings in Havana Harbour, was blown up. Two officers and 264 enlisted men were killed by the explosion and in the sinking of the ship.

The next morning, the newspapers carried the report to all parts of the United States, and, indeed, to the whole world. A tidal wave of anger surged over this Country.

“That means war!” was the common utterance.

I doubt whether Roosevelt ever worked with greater relish than during the weeks succeeding the blowing-up of the Maine. The Navy Department arranged in hot haste to victual the ships; to provide them with stores of coal and ammunition; to bring the crews up to their full quota by enlisting; to lay out a plan of campaign; to see to the naval bases and the lines of communication; and to coÖperate with the War Department in making ready the land fortifications along the shore.

Having accomplished his duty as Assistant Secretary, Roosevelt resigned. He thought that he had a right to retire from that post, and to gratify his long cherished desire to take part in the actual warfare.

General Alger, the Secretary of War, had a great liking for Roosevelt, offered him a commission in the Army, and even the command of a regiment.

This he prudently declined, having no technical military knowledge. He proposed instead that Dr. Leonard Wood should be made Colonel, and that he should serve under Wood, as Lieutenant Colonel.

While Roosevelt finished his business at the Navy Department, Colonel Wood hurried to San Antonio, Texas, the rendezvous of the First Regiment of Volunteer Cavalry—the Rough Riders!

A call for volunteers, issued by Roosevelt and endorsed by Secretary Alger, spread through the West and Southwest, and it met with a quick response.

Not even in Garibaldi’s famous Thousand, was such a strange crowd gathered. It comprised cow-punchers, ranchmen, hunters, professional gamblers, and rascals of the Border, sportsmen, mingled with the society sports, former football players and oarsmen, polo players, and lovers of adventure from the great eastern cities. They all had one quality in common—courage—and they were all bound together by one common bond—devotion to Theodore Roosevelt.

Nearly every one of them knew him personally. Some of the western men had hunted or ranched with him. Some of the eastern had been with him in college, or had had contact with him in one of the many vicissitudes of his career.

. . . . . . . . . .

I shall not attempt to follow in detail the story of the Rough Riders, but shall touch only on those matters which refer to Roosevelt himself.

Wood having been promoted to Brigadier General, in command of a larger unit, Theodore Roosevelt became Colonel of the regiment of Rough Riders.

On July 1 and 2, he commanded the Rough Riders in their attack on and capture of San Juan Hill, in connection with some coloured troops.

In this engagement, their nearest approach to a battle, the Rough Riders, who had less than five hundred men in action, lost eighty-nine in killed and wounded.

Then followed a dreary life in the trenches, until Santiago surrendered, and then a still more terrible experience, while they waited for Spain to give up the war.

Under a killing tropical sun, receiving irregular and often damaged food, without tent or other protection from the heat or from the rain, the Rough Riders endured for weeks the ravages of fever, climate, and privation.

Finally, because of Roosevelt’s insistence, the Government at Washington, without loss of time, ordered the Army home.

The sick were transported by thousands to Montauk Point, at the eastern end of Long Island, where in spite of the best medical care which could be improvised, large numbers of them died.

But the Army knew, and the American Public knew, that Roosevelt had saved multitudes of lives. At Montauk Point, he was the most popular man in America.

This concluded Roosevelt’s career as a soldier. The experience introduced to the Public those virile qualities of his, with which his friends were familiar.

William Roscoe Thayer (Arranged)

THE RIVER OF DOUBT

Roosevelt decided to make one more trip for hunting and exploration. As he could not go to the North Pole, he said, because that would be poaching on Peary’s field, he selected South America.

He had long wished to visit the Southern Continent, and invitations to speak at Rio Janeiro and at Buenos Aires, gave him an excuse for setting out.

He started with the distinct purpose of collecting animal and botanical specimens, this time for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which provided two trained naturalists to accompany him. His son Kermit, toughened by the previous adventure, went also.

Having paid his visits and seen the civilized parts of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, he ascended the Paraguay River, and then struck across the plateau which divides its watershed from that of the tributaries of the Amazon. For he proposed to make his way through an unexplored region in Central Brazil, and reach the outposts of civilization on the Great River.

The Brazilian Government had informed him that by the route he had chosen, he would meet a large river—the River of Doubt—by which he could descend to the Amazon.

There were some twenty persons, including a dozen or fifteen native rowers and pack-bearers, in his party. They had canoes and dugouts, supplies of food for about forty days, and a carefully chosen outfit.

With high hopes, they put their craft into the water and moved down stream. But on the fourth day, they found rapids ahead. And from that time on, they were constantly obliged to land and carry their dugouts and stores round a cataract.

The peril of being swept over the falls, was always imminent, and as the trail, which constituted their portages, had to be cut through the matted forest, their labours were increased. In the first eleven days, they progressed only sixty miles. No one knew the distance they would have to traverse, nor how long the river would be broken by falls and cataracts, before it came down into the plain of the Amazon.

Some of their canoes were smashed on the rocks. Two of the natives were drowned. They watched their provisions shrink. Contrary to their expectations, the forest had almost no animals. If they could shoot a monkey or a monster lizard, they rejoiced at having a little fresh meat.

Tropical insects bit them day and night and caused inflammation and even infection. Man-eating fish lived in the river, making it dangerous for the men when they tried to cool their inflamed bodies by a swim.

Most of the party had malaria, and could be kept going only by large doses of quinine. Roosevelt, while in the water, wounded his leg on a rock; inflammation set in, and prevented him from walking, so that he had to be carried across the portages.

The physical strength of the party, sapped by sickness and fatigue, was visibly waning. Still the cataracts continued to impede their progress and to add terribly to their toil. The supply of food had shrunk so much, that the rations were restricted, and amounted to little more than enough to keep the men able to go forward slowly.

Then fever attacked Roosevelt, and they had to wait for a few days, because he was too weak to be moved. He besought them to leave him and hurry along to safety, because every day they delayed consumed their diminishing store of food, and they might all die of starvation.

They refused to leave him, however. A change for the better in his condition came soon. They moved forward. At last they left the rapids behind them, and could drift and paddle on the unobstructed river.

Roosevelt lay in the bottom of a dugout, shaded by a bit of canvas put up over his head, and too weak from sickness even to splash water on his face; for he was almost fainting from the muggy heat and the tropical sunshine.

Forty-eight days, after they began their voyage on the River of Doubt, they saw a peasant, a rubber-gatherer, the first human being they had met. Thenceforward they journeyed without incident.

The River of Doubt flowed into the larger river, Madeira; where they found a steamer which took them to Manaos on the Amazon.

During the homeward voyage, Roosevelt slowly recovered his strength, but he had never again the iron physique with which he had embarked the year before. The Brazilian Wilderness stole away ten years of his life.

He found on his return home that some geographers and South American explorers laughed at his story of the River of Doubt. He laughed, too, at their incredulity; and presently the Brazilian Government, having established the truth of his exploration and named the river after him, Rio Teodoro, his laughter prevailed. He took real satisfaction in having placed on the map of Central Brazil, a river six hundred miles long.

William Roscoe Thayer (Arranged)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The evil men do lives after them; so does the good. With the passing of years, a man’s name and fame either drift into oblivion or they are seen in their lasting proportions.

You must sail fifty miles over the Ionian Sea and look back, before you can fully measure the magnitude and majesty of Mount Ætna. Not otherwise, I believe, will it be with Theodore Roosevelt, when the people of the future look back upon him. The blemishes due to misunderstanding will have faded away. The transient clouds will have vanished. The world will see him as he was....

Those of us who knew him, knew him as the most astonishing human expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did, his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in its scabbard, would have rendered him superhuman, had he not possessed other qualities which made him the best of playmates for mortals.

He had humour, which raises every one to the same level. He had loyalty, which bound his friends to him for life. He had sympathy and capacity for strong, deep love. How tender he was with little children! How courteous with women! No matter whether you brought to him important things or trifles, he understood.

I can think of no vicissitude in life in which Roosevelt’s participation would not have been welcome. If it were danger, there could be no more valiant comrade than he. If it were sport, he was a sportsman. If it were mirth, he was a fountain of mirth, crystal pure and sparkling....

But yesterday, he seemed one who embodied Life to the utmost. With the assured step of one whom nothing can frighten or surprise, he walked our earth as on granite. Suddenly, the granite grew more unsubstantial than a bubble, and he dropped beyond sight into the Eternal Silence.

Happy we who had such a friend! Happy the American Republic which bore such a son!

William Roscoe Thayer (Condensed)