During the winter and summer of 1876, preceding that September when Theodore Roosevelt left his home for Harvard College, he had entered more fully into the social life of the boys and girls of his immediate acquaintance. As a very young boy, there was something of the recluse about him, although in his actual family (and that family included a number of cousins) he was always the ringleader. His delicate health and his almost abnormal literary and scientific tastes had isolated him somewhat from the hurly-burly of ordinary school life, and even ordinary vacation life; but during the winter of 1876 he had enjoyed to the full a dancing-class which my mother had organized the winter before, and that dancing-class sowed the seeds of many friendships. The Livingston, Clarkson, Potter, and Rutherfurd boys, and amongst the girls my friends Edith Carow, Grace Potter, Fannie Smith, Annie Murray, and myself, formed the nucleus in this dancing-class, and the informal “Germans” (as they were called in those days) and all the merriment connected with happy skating-parties and spring picnics in Central Park cemented relationships which lasted faithfully through later days. My brother Elliott, more naturally a social leader, influenced the young naturalist to greater interest in his humankind, and when the spring merged into happy summer at Oyster Bay, Theodore was already showing a keener pleasure in intercourse with young people of his own age.

In a letter to “Edith” early in the summer, I write of an expedition which he took across the bay to visit another girl friend. He started at five o’clock in the morning and reached the other shore at eight o’clock. Thinking it too early to pay a call, he lay down on a large rock and went to sleep, waking up to find his boat had drifted far away. When he put on his spectacles he could see the boat at a distance, but, of course, did not wish to swim with his clothes on, and decided to remove them temporarily. Having secured the boat, he forgot that it might be wise to put on his clothes before sleeping again under the dock. To his perfect horror, waking suddenly about an hour later, the boat, clothes, and all had vanished. At the same moment he heard the footsteps of his fair inamorata on the wooden planks of the dock above his head. She had walked down with a friend to greet the admirer whom she expected at about nine o’clock. His description of his feelings as he lay shivering, though not from cold, while above him they calmly discussed his probable arrival and the fact that they thought they would wait there to greet him, can probably be imagined. The girls, after a period of long waiting, walked away into the woods, and the self-conscious young man proceeded to swim down a hidden creek where he thought the tide had taken his recalcitrant boat, and where, sure enough, he found it. The sequel to this little story throws much light on masculine human nature, for he conceived an aversion to the lady who so unconsciously had put him in this foolish position, and rowed defiantly back to Oyster Bay without paying the proposed visit!

During that summer my father, who always gave his children such delightful surprises, drilled us himself in a little play called “To Oblige Benson,” in which Theodore took the part of an irascible and absent-minded farmer, and our beloved cousin John Elliott the part of an impassioned lover, while my friend Fannie Smith and I were the heroines of the adventures. My father’s efforts to make Theodore into a farmer and John into a lover were commendable though not eminently successful, but all that he did for us in those ways gave to his children a certain ease in writing and speaking which were to be of great value in later years. Fannie Smith, to show how Theodore still dominated the little circle from the standpoint of intellect, writes that same July: “I have no power to write sensibly today. If I were writing to Theodore I would have to say something of this kind, ‘I have enjoyed Plutarch’s last essay on the philosophy of Diogenes excessively.’” In his early college days, however, he seems temporarily to put the “philosophy of Diogenes” aside, and to become a very normal, simple, pleasure-loving youth, who, however, always retained his earnest moral purpose and his realization that education was a tool for future experience, and, therefore, not to be neglected.

He writes on November 26, 1876: “I now belong to another whist club, composed of Harry Minot, Dick Saltonstall and a few others. They are very quiet fellows but also very pleasant. Harry Minot was speaking to me the other day about our making a collecting trip in the White Mountains together next summer. I think it would be good fun.” The result of that collecting trip will be shown a little later in this chapter. On December 14 he writes again: “Darling Pussie [his pet name for me]: I ought to have written you long ago but I am now having examinations all the time, and am so occupied in studying for them that I have very little time for myself, and you know how long it takes me to write a letter. My only excitement lately has been the dancing class which is very pleasant. I may as well describe a few of my chief friends.” He then gives an account of his specially intimate companions, and speaks as follows of one whose name has become prominent in the annals of his country’s history as able financier, secretary of state, and colonel in the American Expeditionary Force—Robert Bacon: “Bob Bacon is the handsomest man in the class and is as pleasant as he is handsome. He is only sixteen, but is very large.” He continues to say that he would love to bring home a few of his friends at Christmas time, and concludes: “I should like a party very much if it is perfectly convenient.” The party proved a delightful Christmas experience, and the New York girls and Boston boys fraternized to their hearts’ content. On his return to Cambridge after these Christmas holidays he writes one of his amusing, characteristic little notes, interspersed with quaint drawings. “Darling Pussie: I delivered your two notes safely and had a very pleasant journey on in the cars. To drown my grief at parting from you all, I took refuge, not in the flowing bowl, but in the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine—not to mention squab sandwiches. A journey in the cars always renders me sufficiently degraded to enjoy even the love stories in the latter magazine. I think that if I was forced to travel across the continent, towards the end of my journey, I should read dime novels with avidity. Good-bye darling. Your loving Tedo.”

The signature was followed by accurate representations of Harper’s Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and the squab sandwich, which he labels “my three consolations”!

A letter dated February 5, 1877, shows the Boston of those days in a very pleasant light. He begins: “Little Pussie: I have had a very pleasant time this week as, in fact, I have every week. It was cram week for ‘Conic Sections’ but, by using most of my days for study, I had two evenings, besides Saturday, free. On Wednesday evening, Harry Jackson gave a large sleighing party; this was great fun for there were forty girls and fellows and two matrons in two huge sleighs. We sang songs for a great part of the time for we soon left Boston and were dragged by our eight horses rapidly through a great many of the pretty little towns which form the suburbs of Boston. One of the girls looked quite like Edith only not nearly as pretty as her ladyship. We came home from our sleigh ride about nine and then danced until after twelve. I led the German with Harry Jackson’s cousin, Miss Andrews. After the party, Bob Bacon, Arthur Hooper, myself and some others, came out in a small sleigh to Cambridge, making night hideous with our songs. On Saturday I went with Minot Weld to an Assembly (a juvenile one I mean) at Brookline. This was a very swell affair, there being about sixty couples in the room. I enjoyed myself very much indeed.... I came home today in time for my Sunday-school class; I am beginning to get very much interested in my scholars, especially in one who is a very orderly and bright little fellow—two qualities which I have not usually found combined. Thank Father for his dear letter. Your loving brother, Ted.”

The above letter shows how normal a life the young man was leading, how simply and naturally he was responding to the friendly hospitality of his new Boston friends. Boston had welcomed him originally for the sake of his older sister, who, during two charming summer visits to Bar Harbor, Maine, had made many New England friends. The Sunday-school which he mentions, and to which he gave himself very faithfully, proved a big test of character, for it was a great temptation to go with the other fellows on Saturday afternoons to Chestnut Hill or Brookline or Milton, where open house was kept by the Lees, Saltonstalls, Whitneys, and other friends, and it was very hard either to refuse their invitation from the beginning or to leave the merry parties early Sunday morning and return to Cambridge to be at his post to teach the unruly little people of the slums of Cambridge. So deeply, however, had the first Theodore Roosevelt impressed his son with the necessity of giving himself and the attainments with which his superior advantages had endowed him to those less fortunate than he, that all through the first three years of his college life he only failed to appear at his Sunday-school class twice, and then he arranged to have his class taken by a friend. Truly, when he put his hand to the plough he never turned back.

On March 27 of his first year at college he writes again in his usual sweet way to his younger sister: “Little Pet Pussie: 95 per cent will help my average. I want to pet you again awfully! You cunning, pretty, little, foolish Puss. My easy chair would just hold myself and Pussie.” Again on April 15: “Little Pussie: Having given Motherling an account of my doings up to yesterday, I have reserved the more frivolous part for little pet Pussie. Yesterday, in the afternoon, Minot Weld drove me over to his house and at six o’clock we sallied forth in festive attire to a matinÉe ‘German’ at Dorchester which broke up before eleven o’clock. This was quite a swell affair, there being about 100 couples.... I spent last night with the Welds and walked back over here to Forest Hill with Minot in the afternoon, collecting a dozen snakes and salamanders on the way.” Still the natural historian, even although on pleasure bent; so snakes and salamanders hold their own in spite of “swell matinÉe Germans.” From Forest Hill that same Sunday he writes a more serious letter to his father: “Darling Father: I am spending my Easter vacation with the Minots, who, with their usual kindness, asked me to do so. I did not go home for I knew I should never be able to study there. I have been working pretty steadily, having finished during the last five days, the first book of Horace, the sixth book of Homer, and the ‘Apology of Socrates.’ In the afternoon, some of the boys usually come out to see me and we spend that time in the open air, and on Saturday evening I went to a party, but during the rest of the time I have been working pretty faithfully. I spent today, Sunday, with the Welds and went to their church where, although it was a Unitarian Church, I heard a really remarkably good sermon about ‘The Attributes of a Christian.’ I have enjoyed all your letters very much and my conscience reproaches me greatly for not writing you before, but as you may imagine, I have had to study pretty hard to make up for lost time, and a letter with me is very serious work. Your loving son, T.R. Jr.”

On June 3, as his class day approaches, and after a visit to Cambridge on the part of my father, who had given me and my sister and friends Edith Carow and Maud Elliott the treat of accompanying him, Theodore writes: “Sweet Pussie: I enjoyed your visit so much and so did all of my friends. I am so glad you like my room, and next year I hope to have it even prettier when you all come on again.” His first class day was not specially notable, but he finished his freshman year standing high in his class and having made a number of good friends, although at that period I do not think that he was in any marked degree a leader amongst the young men of the class. He was regarded more as an all-round good sport, a fellow of high ideals from which he never swerved, and one at whom his companions, who, except Harry Minot, had not very strong literary affiliations, were always more or less surprised because of the way in which their otherwise perfectly normal comrade sank into complete oblivion when the magic pages of a book were unrolled before him.

That summer, shortly after class day, he and Harry Minot took their expedition to the Adirondacks with the following results, namely: a catalogue written in the mountains of “The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, N.Y., by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and H.D. Minot.” This catalogue was sent to me by Mr. John D. Sherman, Jr., of Mt. Vernon, N.Y. He tells me that it was originally published in 1877 and favorably mentioned soon after publication in the Nuttall Bulletin. Mr. Sherman thinks that the paper was “privately” published, and it was printed by Samuel E. Casino, of Salem, who, when a mere boy, started in the natural-history-book business. The catalogue shows such careful observation and such perseverance in the accumulation of data by the two young college boys that I think the first page worthy of reproduction as one of the early evidences of the careful study Theodore Roosevelt had given to the subject which always remained throughout his life one of the nearest to his heart.

His love of poetry in those days became a very living thing, and the summer following his first college year was one in which the young people of Oyster Bay turned with glad interest to the riches not only of nature but of literature as well. I find among my papers, painstakingly copied in red ink in my brother’s handwriting, Swinburne’s poem “The Forsaken Garden.” He had sent it to me, copying it from memory when on a trip to the Maine woods. Later, on his return, we would row by moonlight to “Cooper’s Bluff” (near which spot he was eventually to build his beloved home, Sagamore Hill), and there, having climbed the sandy bulwark, we would sit on the top of the ledge looking out on the shimmering waters of the Sound, and he would recite with a lilting swing in the tone of his voice which matched the rhythm of the words:

He always loved the rhythm of Swinburne, just as he loved later the wonderful ringing lines of Kipling, which he taught to his children and constantly repeated to himself.

In the summer of 1877 the two brothers, Elliott and Theodore, decided to row from Oyster Bay in their small boats to Whitestone, near Flushing, where my aunt Mrs. Gracie was living in an old farmhouse. Elliott was really the sailor of the family, an expert sailor, too, and loved to manage his 20-footer, with able hand, in the stormiest weather, but Theodore craved the actual effort of the arms and back, the actual sense of meeting the wave close to and not from the more sheltered angle of a sailboat; and so the two young brothers who were perfectly devoted to each other started on the more adventurous trip together. They were caught in one of the sudden storms of the Long Island Sound, and their frail boats were very nearly swamped, but the luck which later became with Theodore Roosevelt almost proverbial, was with them, and the two exhausted and bedraggled, wave-beaten boys arrived sorely in need of the care of the devoted aunt who, as much as in the days when she taught their A B C’s to the children of the nursery of 20th Street, was still their guardian angel. In September, 1877, Theodore returns as a sophomore to Cambridge and writes in October again: “Sweet Pussie: Thank you ever so much, darling, for the three, cunning, little books which I am going to call my ‘Pussie Books.’ They were just what I wanted. In answer to your question, I may say that it does not seem to make the slightest difference to Brooks and Hooper that they have been dropped, although Brooks is universally called ‘Freshie.’ My respect for the qualities of my classmates has much increased lately, by the way, as they now no longer seem to think it necessary to confine their conversation exclusively to athletic subjects. I was especially struck by this the other night, when, after a couple of hours spent in boxing and wrestling with Arthur Hooper and Ralph Ellis, it was proposed to finish the evening by reading aloud from Tennyson and we became so interested in ‘In Memoriam’ that it was past one o’clock when we separated.” (Evidently the lover of books was beginning to be a leader in making his associates share his love of the poets.)

In November he writes again: “I sat up last night until twelve, reading ‘Poems & Poets’; some of the boys came down to my room and we had a literary coffee party. They became finally interested in Edgar Poe—probably because they could not understand him.” My brother always had a great admiration for Edgar Allan Poe, and would chant “The Raven” and “Ulalume” in a strange, rather weird, monotonous tone. He especially delighted in the reference to “the Dank Tarn of Auber” and the following lines:

Poe’s rhythm and curious, suggestive, melancholy quality of perfection affected strongly his imagination, and he placed him high in rank amongst the poets of his time.

One can picture the young men, strong and vigorous, wrestling and boxing together in Theodore Roosevelt’s room, and then putting aside their athletic contests, making their coffee with gay nonchalance, and settling down to a night of poetry, led in the paths of literature by the blue-eyed young “Berserker,” as my mother used to call Theodore in those college days.

During the summer of 1877 my father accompanied my sister Anna to Bar Harbor on one of her annual excursions to that picturesque part of the Maine coast, where they visited Mr. George Minot and his sisters. He writes to my mother in his usual vein of delightful interest in people, books, and nature, and seems more vigorous than ever, for he describes wonderful walks over the mountains and speaks of having achieved a reputation as a mountain-climber. How little any of the family who adored him realized that from a strain engendered by that climbing the seed of serious trouble had been sown in that splendid mechanism, and that in a few short months the vigorous and still young man of forty-six was to lay down that useful life which had been given so ardently and unselfishly for the good of his city and the joy and benefit of his family.

At this time, however, when Theodore went back to college as a sophomore, there was no apprehension about my father’s health, and the first term of the college year was passed in his usual happy activities.

Shortly after the New Year my father’s condition became serious, due to intestinal trouble, and the following weeks were passed in anxious nursing, the distress of which was greatly accentuated by the frightful suffering of the patient, who, however, in spite of constant agony, bore the sudden shattering of his wonderful health with magnificent courage. My brother Theodore could not realize, as did my brother Elliott, who was at home, the serious condition of our father, for it was deemed best that he should not return from college, where difficult examinations required all his application and energy. Elliott gave unstintedly a devotion which was so tender that it was more like that of a woman, and his young strength was poured out to help his father’s condition. The best physicians searched in vain for remedy for the hidden trouble, but in spite of all their efforts the first Theodore Roosevelt died, February 9, 1878, and the gay young college sophomore was recalled to a house of mourning. In spite of the sorrow, in spite of a sense of irreparable loss, there was something infinitely inspiring in the days preceding and following my father’s death. When New York City knew that its benefactor lay in extreme illness, it seemed as if the whole city came to the door of his home to ask news of him. How well I remember the day before his death, when the papers had announced that there was but little hope of his recovery. The crowd of individuals who filled 57th Street in their effort to hear the physicians’ bulletin concerning his condition was huge and varied. Newsboys from the West Side Lodging House, little Italian girls from his Sunday-school class, sat for hours on the stone steps of 6 West 57th Street, our second home, waiting with anxious intensity for news of the man who meant more to them than any other human being had ever meant before; and those more fortunate ones who had known him in another way drove unceasingly up in their carriages to the door and looked with sympathetic interest at the children of the slums who shared with them such a sense of bitter bereavement and loss in the premature death of one so closely connected with all sides of his beloved native city.

Meanwhile, the family of the first Theodore Roosevelt seemed hardly able to face the blank that life meant when he left them, but they also felt that the man who had preached always that “one must live for the living” would have wished “his own” to follow out his ideal of life, and so each one of us took up, as bravely as we could, our special duties and felt that our close family tie must be made stronger rather than weaker by the loss that we had sustained.

On March 3, 1878, my brother writes from Cambridge:

My own darling, sweet, little treasure of a Pussie: Oh! I have so longed for you at times during the last few days. Darling one, you can hardly know what an inestimable blessing to a fellow it is to have such a home as I have. Even now that our dear father has been taken away, it is such a great pleasure to look forward to a visit home; and indeed, he has only ‘gone before,’ and oh! what living and loving memories he has left behind him. I can feel his presence sometimes when I am sitting alone in the evening; I have not felt nearly as sad as I expected to feel, although, of course, there are every now and then very bitter moments. I am going to bring home some of his sweet letters to show you. I shall always keep them, if merely as talismans against evil. Kiss little mother for me, and my love to Aunt Susie and Uncle Hill. [My mother and I were staying in Philadelphia with my aunt Mrs. West.] Tell the latter, Uncle Hill, I am looking forward to spending a month of nude happiness with him next summer among the wilds of Oyster Bay.

Your loving Teddy.

When my brother speaks of keeping my father’s letters to him as “talismans against evil,” he not only expressed the feeling of desire to keep near him always the actual letters written by my father, but far more the spirit with which these letters are permeated. Years afterward, when the college boy of 1878 was entering upon his duties as President of the United States, he told me frequently that he never took any serious step or made any vital decision for his country without thinking first what position his father would have taken on the question. The day that he moved into the White House happened to be September 22, the day of my father’s birth, and dining with him that night in the White House for the first time, we all mentioned this fact and felt that it was a good omen for the future, and my brother said that every time he dated a letter that day he felt with a glow of tender memory the realization that it was his father’s birthday, and that his father’s blessing seemed specially to follow him on that first day when he made his home in the beautiful old white mansion which stands in the heart of America for all that America means to her sons and daughters.

Several other equally loving letters in that March of 1878 proved how the constant thoughts of the young sophomore turned to the family at home, and also his own sense of loss in his father’s death, but I think the many interests and normal surroundings brought their healing power to the boy of nineteen, and at the end of that year of his college life he had become a well-rounded character. His mind, intelligently focussed upon many intellectual subjects, had broadened in scope, and physically he was no longer the delicate, dreamy boy of earlier days. The period of his college life, although not one of as unusual interest as perhaps other periods in his life, was of inestimable value in the forming of his character. Had Theodore Roosevelt continued to be abnormally developed along the scientific and intellectual side of his nature, he would never have become the “All-American” which he was destined to be. It was necessary for him to fall into more commonplace grooves; it was necessary for him to meet the young men of his age on common ground, to get the “give-and-take” of a life very different from the more or less individual life which, owing to his ill health and intellectual aspirations, he had hitherto led, and already, by the end of the second year of college, he was beginning to take a place in the circle of his friends which showed in an embryonic way the leadership which later was to be so strongly evidenced.

On October 8, 1878, returning to Cambridge as a junior, he writes to his mother: “Darling, beloved, little motherling: I have just loved your dear, funny, pathetic, little letter, and I am now going to write you the longest letter I ever write, and if it is still rather short, you must recollect that it takes Teddy-boy a long time to write. I have enjoyed Charlie Dickey’s being here extremely, and I think I have been of some service to him. We always go to prayers together; for his own sake, I have not been much with him in the daytime, but every evening, we spend a good part of the time together in my room or his. He is just the same, honest, fine fellow as ever, and unless I am very much mistaken, is going to make a thorough success in every way of college. My studies do not come very well this year, as I have to work nearly as hard on Saturday as on any other day—six, seven or eight hours. Some of the studies are extremely interesting, however, especially Political Economy and Metaphysics. These are both rather hard, requiring a good deal of work, but they are even more interesting than my Natural History courses; and all the more so from the fact that I radically disagree on many points with the men whose books we are reading, (Mill and Ferrier). One of my zoological courses is rather dry, but the other I like very much, though it necessitates ten or twelve hours’ work a week. My German is not very interesting, but I expect that my Italian will be when I get further on. For exercise, I have had to rely on walking, but today I have regularly begun sparring. I practice a good deal with the rifle, walking to and from the range, which is nearly three miles off; my scores have been fair, although not very good. Funnily enough, I have enjoyed quite a burst of popularity since I came back, having been elected into several different clubs. My own friends have, as usual, been perfect trumps, and I have been asked to spend Sundays with at least a half-dozen of them, but I have to come back to Cambridge Sunday mornings on account of Sunday School, which makes it more difficult to pay visits. I indulged in a luxury the other day in buying ‘The Library of British Poets,’ and I delight in my purchase very much, but I have been so busy that I have hardly had time to read it yet. I shall really have to have a new bookcase for I have nowhere to put my books.... Your loving son, T. Jr.”

The above letter is of distinct interest for several reasons: first of all, because of the affectionate pains taken by the young man of now nearly twenty to keep his mother informed about all his activities, intellectual, physical, and social. So many young men of that age are careless of the great interest taken by their mothers and do not share with them the joys and difficulties of college life. All through his life, from his boyhood to the very last weeks of his busy existence, my brother Theodore was a great sharer. This is all the more unusual because, as a rule, the man of intellectual pursuits is apt to deny himself to the claims of family and friends, but not so with Theodore Roosevelt, except during the period of some specially hard task, when he would give himself to it to the exclusion of every other interest. Unless during such rare periods, no member of his family ever went to him for guidance or solace or interest without the most generous and most loving response. In the above letter he shows his response to the tender inquiries of his mother, so lately widowed, and he wishes to give her all the information that she desires. One can see that the young junior, as he now was, was coming into his own in more ways than one. He is working harder intellectually; already metaphysics and political economy are catching up with “natural history” in his affections, and, in fact, outdistancing the latter. His individual point of view is shown by the fact that he “radically disagrees on many points with Mill and Ferrier,” and he again shows the persevering determination, so largely a part of his character, in the way in which he walks to and fro the three miles to practise with his rifle at the range. The modest way in which he speaks of his “burst of popularity” is also very characteristic, for he received the unusual distinction of being invited to join several of the most popular clubs. Altogether, this letter in which he tells, although he makes no point of it, of his still faithful service at Sunday-school, no matter how much it interferes with the gay week-end visits which he so much enjoys, and the glimpse which he gives us of his love of poetry as an offset to his harder studies, seems to me to depict in a lovable and admirable light the young Harvard student.

Having written in this accurate way to his mother, within a month he writes to his younger sister:

Sweet Pussie: I am spending Sunday with Minot Weld. It is a beautiful day and this afternoon we are going to drive over to Dick Saltonstall’s where we shall go out walking with Miss Rose Saltonstall and Miss Alice Lee, and drive home by moonlight after tea. I have begun studying fairly hard now, and shall keep it up until Christmas. I am afraid I shall not be able to come home for Thanksgiving; I really have my hands full, especially now that my Political Economy Professor wishes me to start a Finance Club, which would be very interesting indeed, and would do us all a great deal of good, but which will also take up a great deal of time. Of course, I spend a good deal of my spare time in the Porcellian Club which is great fun. Night before last, Harry Shaw and I gave a little supper up there, the chief items on the bill of fare were partridges and Burgundy,—I, confining myself to the partridges. I am going to cut Sunday school today for the second time this year, but when the weather is so beautiful as this, I like every now and then to spend Sunday with a friend. Harry Chapin is going to take my class for me today. Good-bye sweet one,—

Your Loving Tedo.

Here again we see the growth of the young man, the growth of his influence in his class, for it is to him that the Political Economy professor turns to start a finance club, and we see also the proportionate all-round development, for not only does he read poetry, start finance clubs, differ with Mill and Ferrier on abstract subjects, but also joins with Harry Shaw in a little supper of partridges and Burgundy—he confining himself, I would have my readers know, to the partridges! Theodore Roosevelt was growing in every way and especially becoming the more all-round man, and it was well that this growth should take place, for if the all-round man can still keep focussed ideals and strong determination to achieve in individual directions, it is because of the all-round qualities that he becomes the leader of men. Again the happy Christmas holidays came, but this time shadowed by the great blank made by my father’s loss, and in February, 1879, he writes again—now of happy coasting-parties at the Saltonstalls’, where began his intimate relationship with lovely Alice Lee, who later became his wife. One can see the merry young people flying, as he says, “like the wind,” on their long toboggans, and then having a gay dance at the hospitable house of Mrs. Lee.

In March he writes: “I only came out second best in the sparring contest, but I do not care very much for I have had uncommonly good luck in everything this year from studies to society. I enjoyed my trip to Maine very much indeed; of course, I fell behind in my studies, but by working pretty hard last week, I succeeded in nearly catching up again.” This trip to Maine cemented the great friendship between my brother and those splendid backwoodsmen, Bill Sewall and Will Dow, who were later to be partners in his ranching venture in the Far West. Bill Sewall was a strong influence in my brother’s young manhood, and for him great admiration was conceived by the young city boy and, later, by the college student. The splendid, simple, strong man of the woods, though not having had similar educational advantages, was still so earnest a reader and so natural a philosopher that his attitude toward books and life had lasting influence over his young companion.

About this same time, March, 1879, my brother wrote me one of the sweetest and most characteristic of his little love-letters. It was dated from the Porcellian Club on March 28, and enclosed a diminutive birch-bark book of poetry, and the letter ran as follows: “Wee Pussy, I came across such a funny, wee book of poetry today, and I send it to a wee, funny Kitty Coo, with Teddy’s best love.” The page on which the sweet words are written is yellow, but the little birch-bark book is still intact, and the great love engendered by the tender thought of, and expression of that thought to, his sister is even deeper than when the sweet words were actually written.

On May 3 he writes in a humorous vein: “Pet Pussie: At last the deed is done and I have shaved off my whiskers! The consequence, I am bound to add, is that I look like a dissolute democrat of the Fourth Ward; I send you some tintypes I had taken; the front views are pretty good, although giving me an expression of glum misery that I sincerely hope is not natural. The side views do not resemble me any more than they do Michael Angelo or John A. Weeks. The next four months are going to be one ‘demnition grind’ but by great good luck, I shall be able to leave here June 5th, I think.” The whiskers were permanently removed and never again reappeared, except on his hunting trip the following year, and I think he felt, himself, that the lack of them added a touch of elegance to his appearance, for he writes again within a day or two: “I rode over on Saturday morning (very swell with hunting crop and beaver) to Chestnut Hill where I took lunch with the Lees.” He is beginning to be quite a gentleman of fashion, and so the care-free days glide by, another summer comes, with pleasant visits, and another Maine woods excursion; but even when writing in the midst of house-parties of bewildering gaiety, he adds at the end of a long letter in August, 1879, “For my birthday, among the books I most want are the complete editions of Prescott, Motley, and Carlyle,” and signs himself “Your loving St. Buv.,” a new pet name which he had given himself and which was a conglomerate of St. Beuve, for whose writings he had great admiration, and the brother for whom his little sister had such great admiration.

His last year at college was one of equal growth, although the development was not as apparent as in his junior year, and in June, 1880, he graduated with honors, a happy, successful Harvard alumnus. A number of his New York friends went on for class day, and all made merry together, and not long afterwards he and his brother Elliott started on a hunting trip together. Elliott, who as a young child had been the strong one, when Theodore was a delicate little boy, had, during the years of adolescence, been somewhat of an invalid and could not go to college; our father, wise as ever, decided he must have his education in another way, and he arranged for Elliott to spend several years largely in the open air. He became a splendid shot, and my brother Theodore always felt that Elliott was far the better hunter of the two. The brothers were devoted to each other, and were each the complement of the other in character. Theodore writes from Wilcox’s farm, Illinois, August 22, 1880: “Darling Pussie: We have been having a lovely time so far, have shot fair quantities of game, are in good health, though our fare and accommodations are of the roughest. The shooting is great fun; you would laugh to see us start off in a wagon, in our rough, dirty, hunting-suits, not looking very different from our driver; a stub-tailed, melancholy looking pointer under the front seat, and a yellow, fool idea of a setter under the back one, which last is always getting walked on and howling dismally. We enjoy the long drives very much: the roads are smooth and lovely, and the country, a vast undulating prairie, cut up by great fields of corn and wheat with few trees. The birds are not very plentiful, but of great variety; we get prairie chickens in the stubble fields, plover in the pastures, snipe in the ‘slews,’ and ducks in the ponds. We hunt about an hour or two in a place, then get into our wagon and drive on, so that, though we cover a very large tract of country, we are not very tired at the end of the day, only enough to make us sleep well. The climate is simply superb, and though the scenery is not very varied, yet there is something very attractive to me in these great treeless, rolling plains, and Nellie [his pet name for Elliott] and I are great chums, and in the evening, sit and compare our adventures in ‘other lands’ until bedtime which is pretty early.”

And again he writes a few weeks later from Chicago, in a very bantering vein:

September 12, 1880—Darling Pussie: We have come back here after a week’s hunting in Iowa. Elliott revels in the change to civilization—and epicurean pleasures. As soon as we got here he took some ale to get the dust out of his throat; then a milk punch because he was thirsty; a mint julep because it was hot; a brandy mash “to keep the cold out of his stomach”; and then sherry and bitters to give him an appetite. He took a very simple dinner—soup, fish, salmi de grouse, sweetbread, mutton, venison, corn, macaroni, various vegetables and some puddings and pies, together with beer, later claret and in the evening, shandigaff. I confined myself to roast beef and potatoes; when I took a second help he marvelled at my appetite—and at bedtime, wondered why in thunder he felt “stuffy” and I didn’t. The good living also reached his brain, and he tried to lure me into a discussion about the intellectual development of the Hindoos, coupled with some rather discursive and scarcely logical digressions about the Infinity of the Infinite, the Sunday school system, and the planet Mars, together with some irrelevant remarks about Texan “Jack Rabbits” which are apparently about as large as good-sized cows. Elliott says that these remarks are incorrect and malevolent; but I say they pay him off for his last letter about my eating manners! We have had very good fun so far, in spite of a succession of untoward accidents and delays. I broke both my guns, Elliott dented his, and the shooting was not as good as we had expected; I got bitten by a snake and chucked headforemost out of the wagon.

Your Seedy Brother, Theo.

Nothing could better exemplify the intimate, comprehending relationship of the two brothers than the above letter, in which, with exaggerated fun, Theodore “pays Elliott off” for his criticisms of the future President’s eating manners! All through their lives—alas! Elliott’s life was to end prematurely at the age of thirty-three—the same relationship endured between them. Each was full of rare charm, joy of life, and unselfish interest in his fellow man, and thus they had much in common always.

The hunting trip described so vividly in these two letters was, in a sense, the climax of this period of my brother’s life. College days were over, the happy summer following his graduation was also on the wane, and within a brief six weeks from the time these letters were written, Theodore Roosevelt, a married man, was to go forth on the broader avenues of his life’s destiny.