The first recollections of a child are dim and hazy, and so the nursery at 28 East 20th Street, in New York City, does not stand out as clearly to me as I wish it did—but the personality of my brother overshadowed the room, as his personality all through life dominated his environment.

I suppose I must have been about four, and he about seven, when my first memory takes definite form. My older sister, Anna, though only four years older than my brother Theodore, was always mysteriously classed with the “grown people,” and the “nursery” consisted of my brother Theodore, my brother Elliott, a year and a half younger than Theodore, and myself, still a year and a half younger than Elliott.

In those days we were “Teedie,” “Ellie,” and “Conie,” and we had the most lovely mother, the most manly, able, and delightful father, and the most charming aunt, Anna Bulloch, the sister of my Southern mother, with whom children were ever blessed.

Theodore Roosevelt, whose name later became the synonym of virile health and vigor, was a fragile, patient sufferer in those early days of the nursery in 20th Street. I can see him now struggling with the effort to breathe—for his enemy was that terrible trouble, asthma—but always ready to give the turbulent “little ones” the drink of water, book, or plaything which they vociferously demanded, or equally ready to weave for us long stories of animal life—stories closely resembling the jungle stories of Kipling—for Mowgli had his precursor in the brain of the little boy of seven or eight, whose knowledge of natural history even at that early age was strangely accurate, and whose imagination gave to the creatures of forest and field impersonations as vivid as those which Rudyard Kipling has made immortal for all time.

We used to sit, Elliott and I, on two little chairs, near the higher chair which was his, and drink in these tales of endless variety, and which always were “to be continued in our next”—a serial story which never flagged in interest for us, though sometimes it continued from week to week, or even from month to month.

It was in the nursery that he wrote, at the age of seven, the famous essay on “The Foregoing Ant.” He had read in Wood’s “Natural History” many descriptions of various species of ant, and in one instance on turning the page the author continued: “The foregoing ant has such and such characteristics.” The young naturalist, thinking that this particular ant was unique, and being specially interested in its forthgoing character, decided to write a thesis on “The Foregoing Ant,” to the reading of which essay he called in conclave “the grown people.” One can well imagine the tender amusement over the little author, an amusement, however, which those wise “grown people” of 28 East 20th Street never let degenerate into ridicule.

No memories of my brother could be accurate without an analysis of the personalities who formed so big a part of our environment in childhood, and I feel that my father, the first Theodore Roosevelt, has never been adequately described.

He was the son of Cornelius Van Shaack and Margaret Barnhill Roosevelt, whose old home on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway was long a landmark in New York City. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was a typical merchant of his day, fine and true and loyal, but ultraconservative in many ways; and his lovely wife, to whom he addressed, later, such exquisite poems that I have always felt that they should have been given more than private circulation, was a Pennsylvanian of Quaker blood. The first Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest of five sons, and I remember my mother used to tell me how friends of her mother-in-law once told her that Mrs. Cornelius Van Shaack Roosevelt was always spoken of as “that lovely Mrs. Roosevelt” with those “five horrid boys.”

As far as I can see, the unpleasant adjective “horrid” was only adaptable to the five little boys from the usual standpoint of boyish mischief, untidiness, and general youthful irrepressibleness.

The youngest, my father, Theodore Roosevelt, often told us himself how he deplored the fate of being the “fifth wheel to the coach,” and of how many a mortification he had to endure by wearing clothes cut down from the different shapes of his older brothers, and much depleted shoes about which, once, on overhearing his mother say, “These were Robert’s, but will be a good change for Theodore,” he protested vigorously, crying out that he was “tired of changes.”

As the first Theodore grew older he developed into one of the most enchanting characters with whom I, personally, have ever come in contact; sunny, gay, dominant, unselfish, forceful, and versatile, he yet had the extraordinary power of being a focussed individual, although an “all-round” man. Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one-ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.

My father, in his brief life of forty-six years, achieved almost everything he undertook, and he undertook many things, but, although able to give the concentration which is necessary to achievement, he had the power of interesting himself in many things outside of his own special interests, and by the most delicate and comprehending sympathy made himself a factor in the lives of any number of other human beings.

My brother’s great love for his humankind was a direct inheritance from the man who was one of the founders in his city of nearly every patriotic, humanitarian, and educational endeavor. I think, perhaps, the combination of the stern old Dutch blood with the Irish blood, of which my brother always boasted, made my father what he was—unswerving in duty, impeccable in honesty and uprightness, and yet responsive to the joy of life to such an extent that he would dance all night, and drive his “four-in-hand” coach so fast that the old tradition was “that his grooms frequently fell out at the corners”!

I remember that he always gave up one day of every week (and he was a very busy merchant and then banker) to the personal visiting of the poor in their homes. He was not satisfied with doing active work on many organizations, although he did the most extraordinary amount of active organization work, being one of the founders of the Children’s Aid Society, of the State Aid Society, of the Sanitary Commission and Allotment Commission in the time of the Civil War, and of the OrthopÆdic Hospital, not to mention the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Art—but he felt that even more than this organized effort must be the effort to get close to the hearts and homes of those who were less fortunately situated than he.

My older sister suffered from spinal trouble, and my father was determined to leave no stone unturned to make her body fit for life’s joys and life’s labors, and it was because of his efforts to give his little girl health—successful efforts—that in co-operation with his friends Howard Potter and James M. Brown and several others he started the great work of the New York OrthopÆdic Hospital, having become imbued with belief in the methods of a young doctor, Charles Fayette Taylor. Nobody at that time believed in treating such diseases in quite the way in which modern orthopÆdy treats them now, but my father, like his son, had the vision of things to be, and was a leader in his way, as was my brother in his.

He could not at first influence sufficient people to start the building of a hospital, and he decided that if the New York public could only see what the new instruments would do for the stricken children, that it could be aroused to assist the enterprise.

And so, one beautiful spring afternoon, my mother gave what was supposed to be a purely social reception at our second home, at 6 West 57th Street, and my father saw to it that the little sufferers in whom he was interested were brought from their poverty-stricken homes to ours and laid upon our dining-room table, with the steel appliances which could help them back to normal limbs on their backs and legs, thus ready to visualize to New York citizens how these stricken little people might be cured. He placed me by the table where the children lay, and explained to me how I could show the appliances, and what they were supposed to achieve; and I can still hear the voice of the first Mrs. John Jacob Astor, as she leaned over one fragile-looking child and, turning to my father, said: “Theodore, you are right; these children must be restored and made into active citizens again, and I for one will help you in your work.”

That very day enough money was donated to start the first OrthopÆdic Hospital, in East 59th Street. Many business friends of my father used to tell me that they feared his sudden visits when, with a certain expression in his eyes, he would approach them, for then before he could say anything at all they would feel obliged to take out their pocketbooks and ask: “How much this time, Theodore?”

One of his most devoted interests was the newsboys’ lodging-house in West 18th Street, and later in 35th Street, under the auspices of the Children’s Aid Society. Every Sunday evening of his life he went to that lodging-house, after our early hospitable Sunday supper, to which many a forlorn relation or stranded stranger in New York was always invited, and there he would talk to the boys, giving them just such ideas of patriotism, good citizenship, and manly morality as were the themes of his son in later years. The foundational scheme of the Children’s Aid Society was, and is, to place little city waifs in country homes, and thus give them the chance of health and individual care, and a very dramatic incident occurred many years after my father’s death, when my brother, as governor of New York State and candidate for the vice-presidency in 1900, had gone to the Far West to make the great campaign for the second election of William McKinley. The governors of many Western States decided to meet in the city of Portland, Ore., to give a dinner and do honor to the governor of the Empire State, and as Governor Roosevelt entered the room they each in turn presented themselves to him. The last one to come forward was Governor Brady, of Alaska, and as he shook hands with Governor Roosevelt he said: “Governor Roosevelt, the other governors have greeted you with interest, simply as a fellow governor and a great American, but I greet you with infinitely more interest, as the son of your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt.”

My brother smiled and shook him warmly by the hand, and asked in what special way he had been interested in our father, and he replied: “Your father picked me up from the streets in New York, a waif and an orphan, and sent me to a Western family, paying for my transportation and early care. Years passed and I was able to repay the money which had given me my start in life, but I can never repay what he did for me, for it was through that early care and by giving me such a foster mother and father that I gradually rose in the world, until today I can greet his son as a fellow governor of a part of our great country.”

I was so thrilled when my brother told me this story on his return from that campaign, that the very next Sunday evening I begged him to go with me to the old 35th Street lodging-house to tell the newsboys that were assembled there the story of another little newsboy, now the governor of Alaska, to show that there is no bar in this great, free country of ours to what personal effort may achieve. My father was the most intimate friend of each of his children, and in some unique way seemed to have the power of responding to the need of each, and we all craved him as our most desired companion. One of his delightful rules was that on the birthday of each child he should give himself in some special way to that child, and many were the perfect excursions which he and I took together on my birthday.

The day being toward the end of September was always spent in the country, and lover as he was of fine horses, I was always given the special treat of an all day’s adventure behind a pair of splendid trotters. We would take the books of poetry which we both loved and we would disappear for the whole day, driving many miles through leafy lanes until we found the ideal spot, where we unharnessed the horses and gave them their dinner, and having taken our own delicious picnic lunch, would read aloud to each other by the hour, until the early September twilight warned us that we must be on our way homeward.

In those earlier days in New York the amusements were perhaps simpler, but the hospitality was none the less generous, and our parents were indeed “given to hospitality.”

My lovely Southern mother, of whom I will speak more later, had inherited from her forebears a gift for hospitality, and we young children, according to Southern customs, were allowed to mingle more with our elders than was the case with many New York children. I am a great believer in such mingling, and some of the happiest friendships of our later lives were formed with the chosen companions of our parents, but many things were done for us individually as well. When we were between thirteen and sixteen I remember the delightful little Friday-evening dances which my mother and father organized for us in 57th Street, and in which they took actual part themselves.

As I said before, my father could dance all night with the same delightful vim that he could turn to his business or his philanthropy in the daytime, and he enjoyed our pleasures as he did his own. It always seems to me sad that the relationship between father and son, or father and daughter, should not have the quality of charm, a quality which it so often lacks, and which I believe is largely lacking because of the failure of the older generation to enter into the attitude of the younger generation.

I was delicate at one period and could not dance as I had always done, and I remember when I was going to a little entertainment, just as I was leaving the house I received an exquisite bunch of violets with a card from my father, asking me to wear the flowers, and think of his wish that I should not overtire myself, but also of his sympathy that I could not do quite what I had always done.

Comparatively few little girls of fourteen have had so lover-like an attention from a father, and just such thought and tender, loving comprehension made our relationship to our father one of perfect comradeship, and yet of respectful adoration. He taught us all, when very young, to ride and to swim and to climb trees. I remember the careful way in which he would show us dead limbs and warn us about watching out for them, and then, having taught us and having warned us, he gave us full liberty to try our wings and fall by the wayside should they prove inadequate for our adventures.

After graduating from our first Shetland pony, he provided us each with a riding-horse, and always rode with us himself, and a merry cavalcade went forth from our country home, either early in the morning before he started for the train or in the soft summer evenings on his return. When at one time we were living on the Hudson River, we had hoped one autumn afternoon that he would come home early from the city, and great was our disappointment when a tremendous storm came up and we realized that he would take a later train, and that our beloved ride must be foregone. We were eagerly waiting in the hall for his return and watching the rain falling in torrents and the wind blowing it in gusts, when the depot wagon drove up to the door and my father leaped out, followed by the slight figure of a somewhat younger man. As the young man tried to put up his umbrella it blew inside out and, like a dilapidated pinwheel loosened from his hand, ran round and round in a circle. The unknown guest merrily chased the umbrella pinwheel, and my mother, who had joined us children at the window, laughingly wondered who my father’s new friend was. The front door opened and the two dripping men came in, and we rushed to meet them.

I can see the laughing face of the young man become suddenly shy and a little self-conscious as my father said to my mother: “Mittie, I want to present to you a young man who in the future, I believe, will make his name well known in the United States. This is Mr. John Hay, and I wish the children to shake hands with him.”

Many and many a time, long, long years after, when John Hay was secretary of state in the cabinet of the second Theodore Roosevelt, he used to refer to that stormy autumn afternoon when a delicate boy of eleven, at the instigation of his father, shook hands with him and looked gravely up into his face, wondering perhaps how John Hay was going to make his name known throughout the United States. How little did Mr. Hay think then that one day he would be the secretary of state when that same little delicate boy was President of the United States.

My father’s intimacy with John Hay had come about through the fact of contact in the Civil War, when they both worked so hard in Washington together.

My father stands out as the most dominant figure in our early childhood. Not that my mother was not equally individual, but her delicate health prevented her from entering into our sports and unruly doings as our father did; but I have always thought that she, in an almost equal degree with my father, influenced my brother’s nature, both by her French Huguenot and Scotch blood and her Southern ancestry.

The story of her meeting with my father has a romantic flavor to it. My grandmother, Mrs. Stephens Bulloch, lived in an old plantation above Atlanta, on the sand-hills of Georgia. There, in the old white-columned house overlooking a beautiful valley, my grandmother led a patriarchal life, the head of a large family, for she had been as a young girl the second wife of Senator John Elliott, and she not only brought up the children of that marriage but the children and stepchild of her second marriage as well. My own mother was the second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stephens Bulloch, but she never knew the difference between her Elliott half brother and sisters, her Bulloch half-brother and her own brother and sister.

In the roomy old home with its simple white columns there was led an ideal life, and the devotion of her children to my beautiful grandmother, as the many letters in my possession prove, was one of the inspiring factors in their lives, and became the same to our own childhood, for many were the loving stories told us by my mother and aunt of the wonderful character of their mother, who ran her Southern plantation (Mr. Bulloch died comparatively young) with all the practical ability and kindly supervision over her slaves characteristic of the Southern men and women of her time.

The aforesaid slaves were treated as friends of the family, and they became to us, her little Northern grandchildren, figures of great interest. We were never tired of hearing the stories of “Daddy Luke” and “Mom Charlotte.”

The first of these two, a magnificent Nubian, with thick black lips and very curly hair, was the coachman and trusted comrade of my grandmother’s children, while his wife, “Mom Charlotte,” was a very fastidious mulatto, slender and handsome, who, for some illogical reason, considered her mixed blood superior to his pure dark strain. She loved him, but with a certain amount of disdain, and though on week-days she treated him more or less as an equal, on Sundays, when dressed in her very best bandanna and her most elegant prayer-book in hand, she utterly refused to have him walk beside her on the path to church, and obliged him ignominiously to bring up the rear with shamefaced inferiority. Mom Charlotte on Sundays, when in her superior mood, would look at her spouse with contempt, and say, “B’ Luke, he nothin’ but a black nigger; he mout’ stan’ out to de spring,” referring to Daddy Luke’s thick Nubian lips, and pointing at the well about one hundred yards distant from the porch.

There was also a certain “little black Sarah,” who was the foster-sister of my uncle, Irvine Bulloch, my mother’s younger brother. In the old Southern days on such plantations there was almost always a colored “pickaninny” to match each white child, and they were actually considered as foster brother or sister. Little Irvine was afraid of the darkness inside the house, and little Sarah was afraid of the darkness outside the house, and so the little white boy and the little black girl were inseparable companions, each guarding the other from the imaginary dangers of house or grounds, and each sympathetically rounding out the care-free life of the other.

My mother’s brilliant half-brother, Stewart Elliott, whose love of art and literature and music took him far afield, spent much of his time abroad, and when he came back to Roswell (the name of the plantation) he was always much amused at the quaint slave customs. One perfect moonlight night he took his guitar into the grove near the house to sing to the group of girls on the porch, but shortly afterward returned much disgusted and described the conversation which he had overheard between little white Irvine and little black Sarah on the back porch. It ran as follows, both children gazing up into the sky: Sarah: “Sonny, do you see de Moon?” “Yes, Sarah, it do crawl like a worrum.” The moon at the moment was performing the feat which Shelley poetically described as gliding, “glimmering o’er its fleecelike floor.” The young musician could not stand the proximity of such masters of simile as were Irvine and Sarah, and demanded that they should be forbidden the back porch on moonlight nights from that time forth! There was also another young slave who went by the name of “Black Bess,” and was the devoted companion of her two young mistresses, Martha, my mother, and her sister, Anna Bulloch. She slept on a mat at the foot of their beds and rendered the devoted services that only the slave of the old plantation days ever gave to his or her mistress. My mother used to accompany her mother on her visits to all the outlying little huts in which the various negroes lived, and she often told us the story of a visit one day to “Mom Lucy’s” little home, where a baby had just been born.

Mom Lucy had had several children, none of whom had lived but a few hours, and when my grandmother and her little daughter visited the new baby, now about a week old, the mother, still lying on her couch, looked up at my grandmother and said: “Ole Miss, I jus’ done name her.” “And what have you named her, Lucy?” asked my grandmother; “she is a fine baby and I am so glad you are going to have the comfort of her all your life.” “Oh!” said the colored woman sadly, “I don’t ’spec’ her to live, dey ain’t none of ’em done live, and so I jus’ call her Cumsy.” “Cumsy?” said my grandmother, “and what may that mean, Lucy?” “Why, ole Miss, don’t you understan’? Dey all done go to deir heavenly home, and so I jus’ call dis one ‘Come-see-de-world-and-go,’ and my ole man and me we is goin’ to call her ‘Cumsy’ for short.”

My grandmother tried to argue Lucy out of this mortuary cognomen, but with no effect, and years afterward when my mother revisited Roswell as Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the first negroes to greet her was “Come-see-the-world-and-go!”

All these stories of the old plantation were fascinating to the children of the nursery in 20th Street, and we loved to hear how the brothers and sisters in that old house played and worked, for they all did their share in the work of the household. There the beautiful half-sister of my mother, Susan Elliott, brought her Northern lover, Hilborne West, of Philadelphia, whose sister, Mary West, had shortly before married Weir Roosevelt, of New York, the older brother of my father, Theodore Roosevelt. This same Hilborne West, a young physician of brilliant promise, adored the informal, fascinating plantation life, and loved the companionship of the two dainty, pretty girls of fourteen and sixteen, Martha and Anna Bulloch, his fiancÉe’s young half-sisters.

Many were the private theatricals and riding-parties, and during that first gay visit Doctor West constantly spoke of his young connection by marriage, Theodore Roosevelt, who he felt would love Roswell as he did.

A year afterward, inspired by the stories of Doctor West, my father, a young man of nineteen, asked if he might pay a visit at the old plantation, and there began the love-affair with a black-haired girl of fifteen which later was to develop into so deep a devotion that when the young Roosevelt, two years later, returned from a trip abroad and found this same young girl visiting her sister in Philadelphia, he succumbed at once to the fascination from which he had never fully recovered, and later travelled once more to the old pillared house on the sand-hills of Georgia, to carry Martha Bulloch away from her Southern home forever.

I cannot help quoting from letters from Martha Bulloch written in July, 1853, shortly after her engagement, and again from Martha Roosevelt a little more than a year later, when she revisits her old home. She had been hard to win, but when her lover leaves Roswell at the end of his first visit, immediately following their engagement, she yields herself fully and writes:

Roswell, July 26, 1853.

Thee, Dearest Thee:

I promised to tell you if I cried when you left me. I had determined not to do so if possible, but when the dreadful feeling came over me that you were, indeed, gone, I could not help my tears from springing and had to rush away and be alone with myself. Everything now seems associated with you. Even when I run up the stairs going to my own room, I feel as if you were near, and turn involuntarily to kiss my hand to you. I feel, dear Thee,—as though you were part of my existence, and that I only live in your being, for now I am confident of my own deep love. When I went in to lunch today I felt very sad, for there was no one now to whom to make the request to move “just a quarter of an inch farther away”—but how foolish I am,—you will be tired of this “rhapsody....”

Tom King has just been here to persuade us to join the Brush Mountain picnic tomorrow. We had refused but we are reconsidering.

July 27th, ——

We have just returned after having had a most delightful time. It was almost impossible for our horses to keep a foothold, the Mountain was so steep, but we were fully repaid by the beautiful extended view from the top, and when we descended, at the bottom, the gentlemen had had planks spread and carriage cushions arranged for us to rest, and about four o’clock we had our dinner. Such appetites! Sandwiches, chicken wings, bread and cheese disappeared miraculously.

Tom had a fire built and we had nice hot tea and about six o’clock we commenced our return. I had promised to ride back with Henry Stiles, so I did so, and you cannot imagine what a picturesque effect our riding party had,—not having any Habit, I fixed a bright red shawl as a skirt and a long red scarf on my head, turban fashion with long ends streaming. Lizzie Smith and Anna dressed in the same way, and we were all perfectly wild with spirits and created quite an excitement in Roswell by our gay cavalcade—But all the same I was joked all day by everybody, who said that they could see that my eyes were swollen and that I had been crying.

All this in a very delicate Italian hand, and leaving her lover, I imagine, a little jealous of “Henry Stiles,” in spite of the “rhapsody” at the beginning of the letter! My father’s answer to that very letter is so full of deep joy at the “rhapsody,” in which his beautiful and occasionally capricious Southern sweetheart indulged, that I do not think he even remembered “Henry Stiles,” for he replies to her as follows:

New York, August 3rd.

How can I express to you the pleasure which I received in reading your letter! I felt as you recalled so vividly to my mind the last morning of our parting, the blood rush to my temples; and I had, as I was in the office, to lay the letter down, for a few minutes to regain command of myself. I had been hoping against hope to receive a letter from you, but such a letter! O, Mittie, how deeply, how devotedly I love you! Do continue to return my love as ardently as you do now, or if possible love me more. I know my love for you merits such return, and do, dear little Mittie, continue to write, (when you feel moved to!) just such “rhapsodies.”

On December 3, 1853, very shortly before her wedding, Martha Bulloch writes another letter, and in spite of her original “rhapsody,” and her true devotion to her lover, one can see that she has many girlish qualms, for she writes him: “I do dread the time before our wedding, darling—and I wish that it was all up and that I had died game!”

A year and a half later, May 2, 1855, Martha Roosevelt is again at the home of her childhood, this time with her little baby, my older sister, Anna, and her husband has to leave her, and she writes again:

“I long to hear you say once again that you love me. I know you do but still I would like to have a fresh avowal. You have proved that you love me dear, in a thousand ways and still I long to hear it again and again. It will be a joyful day when we meet again. I feel as though I would never wish to leave your side again. You know how much I enjoy being with mother and Anna, but all the same I am only waiting until ‘Thee’ comes, for you can hardly imagine what a wanting feeling I have when you are gone.

“Mother is out in the entry talking to one of the ‘Crackers.’ While I was dressing mother brought in a sweet rose and I have it in my breast pin. I have picked one of the leaves off just this moment and send it to you—for Thee—the roses are out in beautiful profusion and I wish you could see them....”

A year and a half in the cold North had not dimmed the ardor of affection between the young couple.

We children of the nursery in 28 East 20th Street loved nothing better than to make my mother and aunt tell us the story of the gay wedding at the old home near Atlanta. I remember still the thrill of excitement with which I used to listen to the details of that wonderful week before the wedding when all the bridesmaids and ushers gathered at the homestead, and every imaginable festivity took place.

One of my mother’s half-brothers had just returned from Europe, and fell in love at first sight with one of her beautiful bridesmaids, already, alas! engaged to another and much older man, not a member of the wedding-party. My child’s heart suffered unwarranted pangs at the story of the intense attraction of these two young people for each other, and I always felt that I could see the lovely bridesmaid riding back with the man to whom she had unwittingly given her heart, under the Southern trees dripping with hanging moss. The romantic story ended tragically in an unwilling marriage, a duel, and much that was unfortunate.

But my mother and my father had no such complications in their own lives, and the Southern girl who went away with her Northern lover never regretted that step, although much that was difficult and troublous came into their early married life because of the years of war from 1861 to 1865, when Martha Bulloch’s brothers fought for the South and Theodore Roosevelt did splendid and unselfish work in upholding the principles for which the North was giving its blood and brawn. The fighting blood of James Dunwoody and Irvine Bulloch was the same blood infused through their sister into the veins of their young kinsman, the second Theodore Roosevelt, and showed in him the same glowing attributes. The gallant attitude of their mother, Mrs. Stephens Bulloch, also had its share in the making of her famous grandson.

Her son Irvine was only a lad of sixteen, while her stepson, James, was much older and was already a famous naval blockade-runner when she parted from them. Turning to her daughter Anna she prayed that she might never live to know if Irvine were killed or Richmond taken by the Northern army. I cannot but rejoice that her life passed away before such news could come to her. It must have been bitter, indeed, for her under these circumstances to face the necessity of accepting the bread of her Northern son-in-law, and it speaks volumes for the characters of both that during the whole war there was never a moment of estrangement between them or between my father and his lovely sister-in-law, Anna Bulloch, who became, because of the fact that she lived with us during those early years of our lives, one of the most potent influences of our childhood.

I, myself, remember nothing of the strain of those troubled days; but my aunt has often told me of the bedtime hour in the nursery when a certain fair-haired, delicate little boy, hardly four years old, would kneel at her side to say his evening prayer, and feeling that she would not dare interrupt his petition to the Almighty, would call down in baby tones and with bent head the wrath of the Almighty upon the rebel troops. She said that she could never forget the fury in the childish voice when he would plead with Divine Providence to “grind the Southern troops to powder.”

This same lovely aunt taught us our letters at her knee, in that same nursery, having begged, in return for my father’s hospitality, that she should be accepted as our first instructress, and not only did she teach us the three R’s, but many and many a delightful hour was passed in listening to her wonderful renderings of the “Br’er Rabbit” stories.

Both my aunt and my mother had but little opportunity for consecutive education, but they were what it seems to me Southern women ever are—natural women of the world, and yet they combined with a perfect readiness to meet all situations an exquisite simplicity and sensitive sympathy, rarely found in the women of the North. This sensitiveness was not only evidenced in their human relationships but in all pertaining to art and literature. I have often said that they were natural connoisseurs.

I remember that my father would never buy any wine until my mother had tasted it, and experts of various kinds came to her in the same way for expressions of her opinion. She was very beautiful, with black, fine hair—not the dusky brunette’s coarse black hair, but fine of texture and with a glow that sometimes seemed to have a slightly russet shade, what her French hair-dresser called “noir dorÉ,” and her skin was the purest and most delicate white, more moonlight-white than cream-white, and in the cheeks there was a coral, rather than a rose, tint. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of the New York of her day, a reputation only shared by Mrs. Gardiner Howland, and to us, her children, and to her devoted husband she seemed like an exquisite “objet d’art,” to be carefully and lovingly cherished. Her wit, as well as that of my aunt, was known by all her friends and yet it was never used unkindly, for she had the most loving heart imaginable, and in spite of this rare beauty and her wit and charm, she never seemed to know that she was unusual in any degree, and cared but little for anything but her own home and her own children. Owing to delicate health she was not able to enter into the active life of her husband and children, and therefore our earliest memories, where our activities were concerned, turn to my father and my aunt, but always my mother’s gracious loveliness and deep devotion wrapped us round as with a mantle.

And so these were the three Deities of the Nursery in which Theodore Roosevelt spent his first years, and even at that early time they realized that in that simple room in the house which the patriotic women of America are about to restore as a mecca for the American people there dwelt a unique little personality whose mentality grasped things beyond the ken of other boys of his age, and whose gallant spirit surmounted the physical difficulties engendered by his puny and fragile body.

The nursery at 28 East 20th Street in the early years of the Civil War missed its chief deity, my father. From the letters exchanged by my mother and father, preserved by each of them, I have formed a clear realization of what it meant to that nursery to lose for almost two years the gay and vigorous personality who always dominated his environment as did later his son.

Mr. William E. Dodge, in a very beautiful letter written for the memorial meeting of the Union League Club in February, 1878, just after my father’s death, gave the following interesting account of my father’s special work in the Civil War. This letter was read after an eloquent speech delivered by Mr. Joseph H. Choate. The part of the letter to which I especially refer ran as follows:

“When the shadows of the coming war began to grow into a reality he (Theodore Roosevelt) threw himself with all his heart and soul into work for the country.

“From peculiar circumstances he was unable to volunteer for military service, as was his wish, but he began at once to develop practical plans of usefulness to help those who had gone to the front.

“He became an active worker on the Advisory Board of the Woman’s Central Association of Relief, that wonderful and far-reaching organization of patriotic women out of which grew the Sanitary Commission.

“He worked with the ‘Loyal Publication Society,’ which, as many of our members know, was a most active and useful educating power in the days when there was great ignorance as to the large issues of the conflict.

“He joined enthusiastically in the organization of the Union League Club, was for years a most valued member of its executive committees and aided in the raising and equipment of the first colored troops.

“His great practical good sense led him to see needs which escaped most other minds. He felt that the withdrawal from the homes of so many enlisted men would leave great want in many sections of the country. He saw the soldiers were more than amply clothed and fed, and their large pay wasted mostly among the sutlers, and for purposes which injured their health and efficiency. So with two others he drafted a bill for the appointment of Allotment Commissioners, who without pay should act for the War Department and arrange to send home to needy families, without risk or cost, the money not needed in the camps. For three months they worked in Washington to secure the passage of this act—delayed by the utter inability of Congressmen to understand why anyone should urge a bill from which no one could selfishly secure an advantage.

“When this was passed he was appointed by President Lincoln one of the three Commissioners from this State. For long, weary months, in the depth of a hard winter, he went from camp to camp, urging the men to take advantage of this plan.

“On the saddle often six to eight hours a day, standing in the cold and mud as long, addressing the men and entering their names.

“This resulted in sending many millions of dollars to homes where it was greatly needed, kept the memory of wives and children fresh in the minds of the soldiers, and greatly improved their morale. Other States followed, and the economical results were very great.

“Towards the close of the war, finding the crippled soldiers and the families of those who had fallen were suffering for back pay due and for pensions, and that a race of greedy and wicked men were taking advantage of their needs to plunder them, he joined in organizing the Protective War-Claim Association, which without charge collected these dues. This saved to the soldiers’ families more than $1,000,000 of fees.

“He also devised and worked heartily in the Soldiers’ Employment Bureau, which found fitting work for the crippled men who by loss of limb were unfitted for their previous occupations. This did wonders toward absorbing into the population of the country those who otherwise would have been dependent, and preserved the self-respect of the men. I believe it did more and vastly better work than all the ‘Soldiers’ homes’ combined. For the work in the Allotment Commission he received the special and formal thanks of the State in a joint resolution of the Legislature.”

Nothing was more characteristic of my father’s attitude toward life than his letters during this period to my mother. He realized fully that in leaving his young family he was putting upon his youthful and delicate wife—whose mental suffering during the war must have been great, owing to the fact of her being a Southerner—her full share of what was difficult in the situation. He writes with the utmost frankness of his wish that she might look on the great question of which the war was a symptom from the same standpoint as his, but the beautiful love and trust which existed between them was such that in all these letters which passed so constantly during my father’s labors as Allotment Commissioner, there was never the slightest evidence of hurt feelings or friction of any kind.

In the early fall of 1861 he was struggling to have passed by Congress the bill to appoint Allotment Commissioners, and spent weary days in Washington to achieve that purpose. When the bill was passed and he and Mr. William E. Dodge and Mr. Theodore Bronson were appointed as the three commissioners, he threw himself with all the ardor and unselfishness of his magnificent nature into the hard work of visiting the camps in mid-winter, and persuading the reluctant soldiers to believe that it was their duty to allot a certain portion of their pay to their destitute families.

He writes on January 1, 1862:

I have stood on the damp ground talking to the troop and taking their names for six hours at a time. One of the regiments that I visited last, which is wretchedly officered and composed of the scum of our city, seemed for the first time even to recall their families. We had an order from the General of Division, and the Colonel sent his adjutant to carry out our desires. He came, dirty and so drunk that he could not speak straight, and of course got the orders wrong. All the officers seem to be in with the sutler while the private said he was an unmitigated thief. The delays were so great that I stood out with one of these companies after seven o’clock at night, with one soldier holding a candle while I took down the names of those who desired to send money home. The men looked as hard as I have often seen such men look in our Mission neighborhood, but after a little talking and explaining my object and reminding them of those they had left behind them, one after another put down his name, and from this company alone, they allotted, while I was there, $600.00. This would be increased afterwards by the officers, if they were decent ones, and other men absent on guard and through other reasons. I could not help thinking what a subject for a painting it would make as I stood out there in the dark night, surrounded by the men with one candle just showing glimpses of their faces,—tents all around us in the woods. One man, after putting down five dollars a month, said suddenly: “My old woman has always been good to me, and if you please, change it to ten.” In a moment, half a dozen others followed his example and doubled their allotments.

I enclose a letter for Teedie [Theodore]. Do take care of yourself and the dear little children while I am away, and remember to enjoy yourself just as much as you can. [This sentence is so like my father. Duty was always paramount, but joy walked hand in hand with duty whenever it legitimately could.]

I do not want you not to miss me, but remember that I would never have felt satisfied with myself after this war is over if I had done nothing, and that I do feel now that I am only doing my duty. I know you will not regret having me do what is right, and I do not believe you will love me any the less for it.

Yours as ever,
Theodore Roosevelt.

This particular letter is very characteristic of the father of President Roosevelt—a man of the qualities which his country has grown to associate with its beloved “Colonel.” In my brother’s case they were the direct inheritance from the man who stood out knee-deep in mud using his wonderful personality to make those hard-faced drafted men remember their own people at home, and at the same time writes to the lovely mother of his children to try and enjoy herself as much as possible in his absence.

My mother’s answers to my father’s letters were very loving. Alone, and delicate, she never dwells on loneliness or ill health, but tells him the dear details of the home he loved so well. On January 8, 1862, she writes: “Teedie came down stairs this morning looking rather sad, and said ‘I feel badly—I have a tooth ache in my stomach.’—later he asked if ‘Dod’ (God) was a fox?!—this after being shown a picture of a very clever looking fox! He is the most affectionate and endearing little creature in his ways.” One can well imagine how the lonely father, doing his distant and gruelling duty, treasured the dainty letters full of quaint stories of childish sayings. In another and later missive there is a description of a birthday supper-party in which “Teedie” is host to his cousins; it runs as follows: “Teedie, the host, was too busy with his chicken and potatoes to converse much, but as soon as he finished he made the sage remark that he ‘loved chicken, roast beef and everything that was good better than salt water.’ This speech occasioned a roar of laughter, and was evidently thought very witty. Teedie, too, seemed to be under the false impression that it was clever. He seemed to be inflated with vanity for some time afterwards!” How gladly the tired man, after long days in the saddle, and evenings of effort with sullen soldiers, must have turned to just such humorous accounts of the small boy who always said or did something quaint, which lost nothing in the picture drawn by the facile pen of his mother.

Theodore Roosevelt writes his wife again in January, 1862, a letter interesting because of his attitude toward the German regiments. He says:

“We are continually at work now, and to-day saw three regiments, but even at this rate, it will be long before I see you again. They were all Germans to-day—a motley crew, having few friends and frequently no characters. We had been told that we ran the risk of our lives by going to these regiments, and much more nonsense of the same kind, but the only risk we ran has been from starvation. We were out talking to the men until very late, and then found a German dinner which Dodge could eat nothing of but the brown bread. He wanted to be polite, however, and I was much amused with his statement that he would ride five miles to get such bread, which was literally a fact, however, I have no doubt, in his state of starvation.

“The men, as Germans always do, took time to consider, and we left them to describe the allotment idea to other persons. However, after due consideration, a fair number sent money home. These Germans were generally of the lowest characters, and with the exception of one regiment disappointed me, although I have no doubt they will fight well. There are some 12,000 of them.

“This morning I saw that our efforts are noticed in The World and The Tribune. You have seen, I suppose, that we have been mentioned several times in The Times. This is particularly satisfying as the papers threatened once to be down on us, which would lose for us the confidence of the soldiers.”

The letters all give vivid accounts of his experiences, differing in interest. He speaks of General Wadsworth, the grandfather of our present United States senator, and says that the general “helped to make my bed when I spent one night with his division.”

In an interim of work, on February 7, he writes of his invitation to Mrs. Lincoln’s ball, at which he says he had a delightful time.

“Mrs. Lincoln in giving the Ball, stated that she gave it as a piece of economy in war time, and included those diplomats, senators, congressmen and others, that it had been previously the habit to invite at a number of formal dinners. No one lower in the army than the Division General,—not even a Brigadier, had an invitation to the Ball, and of course there was much grumbling and a proportionate amount of envy. Some complained of the supper, but I have rarely seen a better, and often a worse one. Terrapin, birds, ducks, and everything else in great profusion when I was in the dining room, although some complained of the delay in getting into the room, as we went in parties.

“I spent all of yesterday kicking my heels in the ante-room of the Secretary of War, and in making out an order for him which he promised to sign and afterwards refused. [How history repeats itself!] I was with him about two hours, altogether, and received any number of the highest kind of compliments, but I wanted a more important proof of his good feeling which I did not get. I still hope that I may get it through the President.”

On February 12, 1862, comes this description of the delightful visit to Newport News and he says:

“All the officers received us in such a hospitable spirit and the weather assisted in making our stay agreeable. I passed two of the pleasantest days that I have enjoyed when away from home. General Mansfield suggested some practice with the parrot gun, and one of those sad accidents occurred, for a gun burst and two men were killed.

“We have been treated like princes here. The steamboat was put at our disposal and when, through a misunderstanding, it left before we were on board, another one was immediately sent with us. I enclose several things to keep for me.”

Amongst the enclosures was a note which is sufficiently interesting to give in facsimile.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON

Mr. Rosevalt.

Dear Sir:

I very much regretted that a severe headache confined me to my room on yesterday, this morning I find we are expected to hold a noon reception which will be over by three and a half o’clock at which time I will be very happy to have you ride with us.

Very truly yours
Mrs. A. Lincoln.

This quaint missive reminds me of the fact of my father’s kindly tolerance of “Mrs. A. Lincoln’s” little peculiarities. I remember how he used to tell us, when occasionally he was invited, as this letter says, to “ride” with her, that he would also be invited to stop at the shop where she bought her bonnets, and give his advice on which bonnet was especially becoming!

In an earlier letter, after referring to an interview with Secretary Stanton, he speaks of his apparent decision of character. But he was disappointed when he could not, in the beginning, make the secretary take his point of view about the Allotment Commission. Later, however, he received the full support of Secretary Stanton.

In a letter dated February 5 he speaks of “justified pleasure” as follows:

“I find that only about six men under fifty [he himself was only twenty-nine] are invited to the President’s to-night, and I have determined to go for a short time, at least. There will be the largest collection of notables there ever gathered in this country, and it would probably be a sight worth remembering.”

Under date of Washington, February 14, he writes again:

“I have so many acquaintances here now that I could easily find a temporary companion. Hay [John Hay] is going with me to Seward’s to-night, and I am hoping to procure the pass for your mother. [My grandmother was most anxious to get back to her own people in the South]. In Baltimore I saw, or fancied I saw, on the faces of our class of the inhabitants, their feelings in consequence of the news just received of the taking of Roanoke Island. They looked very blue. The sutlers here are serious obstacles in getting allotments. As soon as we see a Regiment and persuade the men to make allotments, they send around an agent to dissuade them from signing their names, convincing them that it is a swindle because they want the money to be spent in Camp and go into their pockets instead of being sent home to the poor families of the men, who are in such want.

“I enclose you a flower from the bouquet on the table of the Executive Mansion. Also a piece of silk from an old-fashioned piano cover in Arlington House.”

As I opened the letter, the flower fell to dust in my hands, but the little piece of green silk, faded and worn, had evidently been treasured by my mother as being a relic of Arlington House.

On February 27, 1862, his stay in Washington was drawing to a close, and my father regretted, as so many have done, that he had not kept a diary of his interesting experiences. He writes on September 27:

“All those whom I have seen here in Washington in social intercourse day by day will be characters in history, and it would be pleasant to look over a diary hereafter of my own impressions of them, and recall their utterly different views upon the policy which should be pursued by the Government. I have rarely been able to leave my room in the evening, for it has been so filled with visitors, but I have not felt the loss of liberty from the fact that those who were my guests I would have taken a great deal of trouble to see, and never could have seen so informally and pleasantly anywhere except in my own room.

“It has, of course, been more my duty to entertain those whose hospitality I was daily receiving, in the camps, by invitations to drop in during the evening; all of these are striving to make their marks as statesmen, and some, I am sure, we will hear from hereafter.”

On March 1, 1862, he says:

We have all been in a state of excitement for some days past, caused by movements in the Army foreshadowing a general battle. The snow which is now falling fast, has cast a damper over all our spirits.... Several of the Generals have stated to me their belief that the war, as far as there was any necessity for so large an army, would be closed by some time in May,—probably the first of May. If so, my work will be all over when I return to New York, and I can once more feel that I have a wife and children, and enjoy them.

It is Sunday afternoon, and I have a peculiar longing to see you all again, the quiet snow falling outside, my own feelings being very sad and that of those around being in the same condition makes me turn to my own quiet fireside for comfort. I wish we sympathized together on this question of so vital moment to our country, but I know you cannot understand my feelings, and of course I do not expect it.

Your Loving Husband Who Wants
Very Much to See You.

One can well imagine the note of sadness in the strong young man who had relinquished his urgent desire to bear arms because of the peculiar situation in which he found himself, but who gave all his time and thought and physical endurance to the work vitally needed, and which he felt he could have handled better with the sympathy of his young wife, whose anxiety about her mother and brothers was so poignant and distressing. Never, however, in the many letters exchanged between the parents of my brother, Theodore Roosevelt, was there one word which was calculated to make less possible the close family love and the great respect for each other’s feelings.

In the last letter quoted above, one feels again that history does indeed repeat itself, when one thinks that it was written in March, 1862, and that those “generals” of whom my father speaks were expecting that no large army would be needed after May 1 of that year, when in reality the long agony of civil war was to rack our beloved country for nearly three years more. This was proven shortly after to my father, and in the following October he is writing again from Baltimore, and this time in a less wistful mood:

Since I last wrote you I have enjoyed my pleasantest experiences as Allotment Commissioner. The weather was lovely our horses good and Major Dix accompanied us from the Fortress to Yorktown. It was about twenty-five miles of historic ground passing over the same country that General McClellan had taken his army along last spring.

First comes the ruins of the little town of Hampton, then through Big Bethel where Schanck was whipped, to the approaches to Yorktown. There ravines have been cut through miles of roads made, and immense breastworks thrown up by our army.

Suydam was away but the rest of General Keyes’ staff received us most hospitably, and after dinner furnished us with fresh horses to visit the regiments, one of their number accompanying us.

I had practise for both my French and German in the Enfans Perdus, Colonel Comfort’s regiment and it was quite late before our return. As I had broken my eyeglasses I had to trust entirely to my horse who jumped over the ditches in a most independent manner. We all sat up together until about twelve except Bronson who had seemed used up all day, and had not accompanied me to the regiments. He seemed to feel the shock of the fall when the car ran off the track, and not to recover from it so easily as myself.

Next morning we rode another twenty-five miles to Newport News to see the Irish Brigade. General Corcoran was there, and accompanied us to the regiments first suggesting Irish whiskey to strengthen us. At dinner ale was the beverage and after dinner each Colonel seemed to have his own particular tope. On our return they made an Irish drink called “scal thun” and about one o’clock gave us “devilled bones.” The servant was invited in to sing for us and furnished with drinks at odd times by the General, who never indulged, however, himself to excess. We then went the grand rounds with the General at two in the morning, arrested two officers for not being at their posts and returned at half past three, well prepared to rest quietly after a very fatiguing day, and one of the most thoroughly Irish nights that I ever passed.

Next morning (yesterday) we had a delightful ride over to Fortress Monroe, and had lunch at General Dix’s before leaving in the boat.

A dozen of the officers were down at the boat, and we felt as we bid goodbye to some of them, like leaving old friends....

Dearest: a few words more and I must close. Bronson has a very bad cold and decides that he will leave me to-morrow. If well enough he will undoubtedly call on you. Of course this makes me doubly homesick but I must see it through.

Goodbye. Yours as ever,
Theodore Roosevelt.

Again on October 18, having apparently been able to return for a brief visit to his family, he writes from Niagara: “I was able to get a top berth and retired for the 31st time in two months to spend the night on the railroad. My three nights at home have made it hard, rather than easier, to continue my journeys.

“All our party started from Albany to Fonda, and I had a hard day’s work for the men had been deceived by the bounty and were suspicious about everything regarding the Allotment Commission. The officers’ dinner was a good deal like pigs eating at a trough. When at night three companies had not yet been visited, I determined to do it wholesale. I had two tents pitched and occupied one already prepared, placing a table, candles and allotment roll in each. I then had the three companies formed into three sides of a square and used all my eloquence. When I had finished they cheered me vociferously. I told them I would be better able to judge who meant the cheers by seeing which company made most allotments. [This sentence of my father’s makes me think so much of my brother’s familiar “shoot; don’t shout!” when he would receive vociferous cheers for any advice given.] I thus raised the spirit of competition and those really were the best that I had taken during the day. By eight o’clock we found our work done, dark as pitch, and rain descending in torrents, but still the work was done.”

These letters give, I think, a vivid picture of my father’s persistence and determined character, and the quality of “getting there,” which was so manifestly the quality of his son as well, and at the same time the power of enjoyment, the natural affiliation with his humankind, and always the thoughtfulness and consideration for his young wife left with her little charges at home.

In that same home the spirit of the war permeated through the barriers of love raised around the little children of the nursery, and my aunt writes of the attitude of the small, yellow-haired boy into whose childish years came also the distant din of battle, arousing in him the military spirit which even at four years of age had to take some expression. She says: “Yesterday Teedie was really excited when I said to him that I must fit his zouave suit. His little face flushed up and he said, ‘Are me a soldier laddie too?’ and when I took his suggestion and said, ‘Yes and I am the Captain,’ he was willing to stand for a moment or two to be fitted.” Even then Theodore Roosevelt responded to his country’s call, and equally to the discipline of the superior officer!