The deed of the cowardly assassin had done its work. William McKinley was dead; the young Vice-President had made the hazardous trip from the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, had taken the solemn oath in Buffalo, had followed the body of his chief to the final resting-place, and had returned to Washington. From Washington he telegraphed to my husband and myself, with the thought which he always showed, and told us that as Mrs. Roosevelt was attending to last important matters at Sagamore, she could not be with him the day he moved into the White House, and that he was very anxious that not only my sister, Mrs. Cowles, and her husband, but that we also should dine with him the first night that he slept in the old mansion. So we went on to Washington, and were with him at that first meal in the house for which he had such romantic attachment because it had sheltered the hero of his boyhood and manhood, Abraham Lincoln. As we sat around the table he turned and said: “Do you realize that this is the birthday of our father, September 22? I have realized it as I signed various papers all day long, and I feel that it is a good omen that I begin my duties in this house on this day. I feel as if my father’s hand were on my shoulder, and as if there were a special blessing over the life I am to lead here.” Almost as he finished this sentence, the coffee was passed to us, and at that time it was the habit at the White House to pass with the coffee a little boutonniÈre to each gentleman. As the flowers were passed to the President, the one given to him was a yellow saffronia rose. His face flushed, and he turned again and said: “Is it not strange! This is the rose we all connect with my father.” My sister and I responded eagerly that many a time in the past we had seen our father pruning the rose-bush of saffronia roses with special care. He always picked one for his buttonhole from that bush, and whenever we gave him a rose, we gave him one of those. Again my brother said, with a very serious look on his face, “I think there is a blessing connected with this,” and surely it did seem as if there were a blessing connected with those years of Theodore Roosevelt in the White House; those merry happy years of family life, those ardent, loving years of public service, those splendid, peaceful years of international amity—a blessing there surely was over that house.

Nothing could have been harder to the temperament of Theodore Roosevelt than to have come “through the cemetery,” as Peter Dunne said in his prophetic article, to the high position of President of the United States. What he had achieved in the past was absolutely through his own merits. To him to come to any position through “dead men’s shoes” was peculiarly distasteful; but during the early years of his occupancy of the White House, feeling it his duty so to do, he strove in every possible way to fulfil the policies of his predecessor, retaining his appointees and working with conscientious loyalty as much as possible along the lines laid down by President McKinley.

That first winter of his incumbency was one of special interest. Many were the difficulties in his path. England, and, indeed, all foreign countries were watching him with deep interest. I realized that fact in a very special way as that very spring of 1902 I took my young daughter abroad to place her at a French school directed by Mademoiselle Souvestre in England. It was the spring when preparations were being made for the coronation of King Edward VII, and because of the fact that I was the sister of the President of the United States, I was received with great courtesy. Our dear friend Mr. Joseph H. Choate was then ambassador to England. Mrs. Choate presented me at court, and the King paid me the unusual compliment—out of respect to my brother—of leaving the dais on which he and the Queen stood, and came forward to greet me personally in order to ask for news of my brother. Special consideration was shown to me in so many ways that when Mr. Robinson and I were visiting Edinburgh, it seemed in no way unusual that we should be invited to Holyrood Castle to the reception given by the lord high commissioner, Lord Leven and Melville. It so happened that we were in Edinburgh during that week of festivity when the lord high commissioner of Scotland, appointed as special representative of the King of Great Britain, holds court in the old castle as though he were actually the King.

We had dined with friends before the reception, and were therefore late in reaching the castle, and were literally the last people at the end of the long queue approaching the dais on which Lord and Lady Leven and Melville stood. As King Edward had himself stepped forward to meet me in Buckingham Palace, I was not surprised when Lord Leven and Melville stepped down from the dais, and I expected him also to ask news of my brother, the President of the United States, as King Edward had done, but to my great surprise, and be it confessed intense pleasure, I heard the lord high commissioner speak as follows: “Mrs. Douglas Robinson, you have been greeted with special courtesy in our country because of your distinguished brother, the President of the United States, but I am greeting you with even greater interest because of your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt. You probably do not remember, for you were a little girl at the time, that a raw-boned young Scotchman named Ronald Leslie Melville came long ago to New York and was much at your home, having had letters of introduction to your father as one of the men best fitted to teach him the modern philanthropic methods used in America. Only to-day,” he continued, “I told the children of Edinburgh, assembled, as is the custom, to listen to the lord high commissioner, that the father of the present President of the United States was the first man who taught me to love my fellow men.”

My heart was very full as I made my courtesy and answered the lord high commissioner. Before he let me pass on he said, with a charming smile: “If you and Mr. Robinson will come tomorrow to lunch with us quietly I will take you to Lord Darnley’s room, which is my dressing-room during the week of Holyrood festivities, and on my dressing-table you will see the photograph of your father, for I never go anywhere without it.” I accepted the invitation gladly, and the next day we went to Holyrood Castle, lunched informally with the delightful chatelain and chatelaine, and I was taken, as the former promised, to see Lord Damley’s room, where my father’s face smiled at me from the dressing-table. My brother loved to hear me tell this story, and I feel that it is not amiss to include it in any recollections concerning my brother, for he was truly the spirit of my father reincarnate.

In May, 1902, Mrs. Roosevelt writes that “Theodore” is just about to leave for a hunting trip, which she hopes will “rest” him. (The rest the year before, of writing a life of Oliver Cromwell, had not been made quite strenuous enough for a real rest!) Later he returned and made a famous speech in Providence, a speech epoch-making, and recognized as such by an English newspaper, The Morning Post of August 27, 1902, a clipping from which I have at hand, and which runs as follows:

“Our New York correspondent announced yesterday that President Roosevelt’s great speech at Providence on the subject of ‘Trusts’ is regarded on all sides and by both parties as an absolutely epoch-making event. This is not surprising to those who have studied the conditions of American politics, and the merits of the particular economic question involved, so far as they are intelligible to us, or last but by no means least, the character and personality of President Roosevelt. It would now seem that the people of the United States are at the parting of the ways between the corrupt, old political system and a newer, manlier, honester conception of public rights and duties.”

Perhaps this sentence foreshadows more than any other contemporary expression the enormous instrument for honesty in high places in the history of his country which it was Theodore Roosevelt’s destiny to be.

Mingled with these great cares and far-reaching issues came, later, brighter moments, and it was about that time that during an interval of play at Oyster Bay, he started the custom of his famous “obstacle walks.” He would gather all the little cousins and his own children and mine, if I could bring them down for a week-end, on Sunday afternoon at Sagamore Hill (even an occasional “grown person” was considered sufficiently adventurous to be included in the party), and would start on one of the strenuous scrambles which he called an “obstacle walk.” It was more like a game than a walk, for it had rules and regulations of its own, the principal one being that each participant should follow the presidential leader “over or through” any obstacle but never “around.” There were sometimes as many as twenty little children as we stood on the top of Cooper’s Bluff, a high sand-bank overlooking the Sound, ready for the word “go,” and all of them children were agog with excitement at the probable obstacles in their path. As we stood on the brink of the big sand-bank, my brother would turn with an amused twinkle in his eye and say: “There is a little path down the side, but I always jump off the top.” This, needless to say, was in the form of a challenge, which he always accompanied by a laugh and a leap into the air, landing on whatever portion of his body happened to be the one that struck the lower part of the sand-bank first. Then there would be a shout from the children, and every one would imitate his method of progress, I myself, generally the only other grown person, bringing up the rear rather reluctantly but determined not to have to follow the other important rule of the game, which was that if you could not succeed in going “over or through” that you should put your metaphorical tail between your physical legs and return home. You were not jeered at, no disagreeable remark was directed at you, but your sense of failure was humiliation enough.

Having reached the foot of the bank in this promiscuous fashion, we would all sit on stones and take off our shoes and stockings to shake the quantities of sand therefrom, and then start on the real business of the day. With a sense of great excitement we watched our leader and the devious course he pursued while finding the most trying obstacles to test our courage. I remember one day seeing in our path an especially unpleasant-looking little bathing-house with a very steep roof like a Swiss chalet. I looked at it with sudden dismay, for I realized that only the very young and slender could chin up its slippery sides, and I hoped that the leader of the party would deflect his course. Needless to say, he did not, and I can still see the somewhat sturdy body of the then President of the United States hurling itself at the obstruction and with singular agility chinning himself to the top and sliding down on the other side. The children stormed it with whoops of delight, but I thought I had come to my Waterloo. Just as I had decided that the moment had come for that ignominious retreat of which I have already spoken, I happened to notice a large rusty nail on one side of the unfinished shanty, and I thought to myself: “If I can get a footing on that nail, then perhaps I can get my hands to the top of that sloping roof, and if I can get my hands there, perhaps by Herculean efforts I too can chin myself over the other side.” Nothing succeeds like success, for having performed this almost impossible feat and having violently returned into the midst of my anxious group of fellow pedestrians, very much as the little boy does on his sled on the steepest snow-clad hill, I was greeted with an ovation such as I have never received in later life for the most difficult achievement, literary or philanthropic! From that moment I was regarded as one really fit to take part in the beloved “obstacle walks,” which were, I cannot help but think, strong factors in planting in the hearts and characters of the children who thus followed their leader, the indomitable pluck and determination which helped the gallant sons and nephews of Theodore Roosevelt to go undauntedly “over the top” on Flanders Field.

“Over or through, never around”—a good motto, indeed, for Young America, and one which was always exemplified by that American of Americans, my brother, Theodore Roosevelt.

At the end of October that year, his affectionate concern for me (for I was delicate at the time) takes form in a lovely letter in which, after giving me the best of advice, and acknowledging humorously that no one ever really took advice offered, he says: “Heaven bless you always whether you take my advice or not.” He never failed to show loving and tender interest in the smallest of my pleasures or anxieties, nor did he and Mrs. Roosevelt ever fail to invite, at my instigation, elderly family friends to lunch at the White House, or gladly to send me autographs for many little boys, or checks to “Dolly,” the nurse of his childhood, whose advanced years I superintended.

In April, 1903, he started on a long trip, and at that time felt that, as the years of his inherited incumbency were drawing to a close, he could forward his own gospel. A humorous reference comes in a letter just before he starts, in which he says: “I was immensely amused with Monroe’s message [my second son, then at St. Paul’s School] about boxing and confirmation, the one evidently having some occult connection with the other in his mind. Give him my love when you write.... Well, I start on a nine-weeks’ trip tomorrow, as hard a trip as I have ever undertaken, with the sole exception of the canvass in 1900. As a whole, it will be a terrific strain, but there will be an occasional day which I shall enjoy.” Again, as he actually starts on that “hard” trip, he sends me a little line of never-failing love. “White House, April 1, 1903. [This in his own writing.] Darling Pussie: Just a last line of Good-bye. I am so glad your poor hand is better at last. Love to dear old Douglas. The house seems strange and lonely without the children. Ever yours, T.R.” Those little notes in his own dear handwriting, showing always the loving thought, are especially precious and treasured.

After that exhausting journey, replete with many thrilling experiences, he returns to Oyster Bay for a little rest, and writes with equal interest of the beautiful family life which was always led there. My boy Stewart was with him at the time, and he speaks of him affectionately in connection with his own “Ted,” who was Stewart’s intimate friend:

“Stewart, Ted and I took an hour and a half bareback ride all together. Ted is always longing that Stewart should go off on a hunting trip with him. I should be delighted to have them go off now. Although I think no doubt they would get into scrapes, I have also no doubt that they would get out of them. We have had a lovely summer, as lovely a summer as we have ever passed. All the children have enjoyed their various activities, and we have been a great deal with the children, and in addition to that, Edith and I have ridden on horseback much together, and have frequently gone off for a day at a time in a little row boat, not to speak of the picnics to which everybody went.

“In the intervals I have chopped industriously. I have seen a great many people who came to call upon me on political business. I have had to handle my correspondence of course, and I have had not a few wearing matters of national policy, ranging from the difficulties in Turkey to the scandals in the Post Office. But I have had three months of rest, of holiday, by comparison with what has gone before. Next Monday I go back to Washington, and for the thirteen months following, there will be mighty little let-up to the strain. But I enjoy it to the full. “What the outcome will be as far as I am personally concerned, I do not know. It looks as if I would be renominated; whether I shall be re-elected I haven’t the slightest idea. I know there is bitter opposition to me from many sources. Whether I shall have enough support to overcome this opposition, I cannot tell. I suppose few Presidents can form the slightest idea whether their policies have met with approval or not. Certainly I cannot. But as far as I can see, these policies have been right, and I hope that time will justify them. If it doesn’t why I must abide the fall of the dice, and that is all there is to it. Ever yours, T.R.”

That letter is very characteristic of his usual attitude. Strain, yes; hard work, yes; but equally “I enjoy it to the full”! Equally also was he willing to abide by the “fall of the dice,” having done what he fully believed to have been the right thing for the country.

That December, the day after Christmas, he writes again:

“Darling Sister: I so enjoyed seeing you here, but I have been so worried about you. I am now looking forward to Stewart’s coming, and to seeing Helen and Ted. But I do wish you would take a rest.

“We had a delightful Christmas yesterday, just such a Christmas as thirty or forty years ago we used to have under Father’s and Mother’s supervision in 28 East 20th Street. At seven all the children came in to open the big, bulging stockings in our bed; Kermit’s terrier, Allan, a most friendly little dog, adding to the children’s delight by occupying the middle of the bed. From Alice to Quentin, each child was absorbed in his or her stocking, and Edith certainly managed to get the most wonderful stocking toys.... Then after breakfast we all went into the library, where the bigger toys were on separate tables for the children. I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one, say between the ages of six and fourteen, when the library doors are thrown open and one walks in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairyland, arrayed on one’s own special table.

“We had a most pleasant lunch at Bamie’s [our sister, Mrs. Cowles]. She had given a delightful Christmas tree to the children the afternoon before, and then I stopped in to see Cabot and Nannie [Senator and Mrs. Lodge]. It was raining so hard that we could not walk or ride with any comfort, so Roly Fortescue, Ted and I played ‘single stick’ in the study later. All of our connections and all of the Lodge connections were at dinner with us, twenty-two in all. After the dinner we danced in the ‘East Room,’ closing with the Virginia Reel,—Edith looking as young and as pretty, and dancing as well as ever.

“It is a clear, cold morning, and Edith and I and all the children (save Quentin) and also Bob Ferguson and Cabot are about to start for a ride. Your loving brother.”

Such were all Christmases at the White House; such was the spirit of the White House in those days.

During the early years of my brothers presidency, my husband and I always spent Thanksgiving at the White House, and joined in festivities very much like the Christmas ones, including the gay Virginia reel, which was also part, always, of the Thanksgiving ceremony. After they bought a little place in Virginia, they spent their Thanksgiving anniversary there.

During the following winter, I visited the White House more frequently than usual, and enjoyed the special ceremonies such as the diplomatic dinner, judicial reception, etc., and I used to station myself near the President when he was receiving the long line of eager fellow citizens, and watch his method of welcoming his guests. Almost always he would have some special word for each, and although the long line would not be held back, for he was so rapid in speech that the individual welcome would hardly take a moment, still almost every person who passed him would have had that extraordinary sense that he or she was personally recognized. It was either a reference to the splendid old veteran father of one, or some devoted sacrifice on the part of the mother of another, or a deed of valor of the person himself, or a merry reminiscence of hunting or Rough Rider warfare; but with each and every person who passed in what seemed occasionally an interminable line, there was immediately established a personal sense of relationship. Perhaps that was, of all my brother’s attributes, the most endearing, namely, that power of his of injecting himself into the life of the other person and of making that other person realize that he was not just an indifferent lump of humanity, but a living and breathing individual coming in contact with another individual even more vividly alive.

After my own visit of special festivity I apparently suggest certain people for him to ask to the White House, or at least I ask him to see them, for in a letter, also in his own handwriting, on February 21, 1904, he says: “Thank you for suggesting F.W. I am glad you told me; it was thoughtful of you. I will also try to see B——, but I don’t know whether it will do any good. He is a kind, upright, typical bourgeois of the purely mercantile type; and however much we respect each other, we live in widely different and sundered worlds.” So characteristic, this last sentence. Willing he always was to try to do what I wished or thought wise, but also he was always frank in giving me the reason why he felt my wish, in some cases, would bear but little fruit. The bourgeois, mercantile type did indeed live in a different and sundered world from that of the practical idealist, Theodore Roosevelt.

In the summer of 1904, when again I was far from well, he writes from the White House, August 14: “Darling Corinne: The news in your letter greatly worried me. I wish I could call to see you and try to amuse you. I think of you always. Let me know at once, or have Douglas let me know, how you are. Edith came back here for a week with me, and we had a real honeymoon time together. Then she went back to the children.... Every spare moment has been occupied with preparing my letter of acceptance. No one can tell how the election will turn out; but I am more than content, whatever comes, for I have been able to do much that was worth doing. With love to Douglas and very, very much love to you, I am, Your devoted Brother.” In the midst of the pressing cares of the administration and the fatigue of his letter of acceptance he still has time for the usual unfailing interest in me and mine!

On October 18, again my brother writes:

“Of course, I am excited about the election, but there really isn’t much I can do about it, and I confine myself chiefly to the regular presidential work. Nobody can tell anything about the outcome. At the present time, it looks rather favorable to me.” And again to my husband on October 25: “As for the result, the Lord only knows what it will be. Appearances look favorable, but I have a mind steeled for any outcome!”

In spite of his “mind steeled for any outcome,” the one great ambition of Theodore Roosevelt’s life was to be chosen President on his own merits by the people of the United States. He longed for the seal of approval on the devoted service which he had rendered to his country, and one of my clearest memories is my conversation with him on Election day, 1904, when on his way back from voting at Oyster Bay, I met him at Newark, N.J., and went with him as far as Philadelphia. In his private drawing-room on the car, he opened his heart to me, and told me that he had never wanted anything in his life quite as much as the outward and visible sign of his country’s approval of what he had done during the last three and a half years. I frankly do not feel that this wish was because of any overweening ambition on his part, but to the nature of Theodore Roosevelt it had always been especially difficult to have come into the great position which he held through a calamity to another rather than as the personal choice of the people of the United States. His temperament was such that he wished no favor which he had not himself won. Therefore, it seemed to him a crucial moment in his life when, on his own merit, he was to be judged as fit or unfit to be his own successor. Not only for those reasons did he wish to be elected in his own right, but because, as was the case in former days when he wished to be renominated governor of New York State, he had again initiated many reforms, and had made many appointments, and he wished to carry those reforms into effect and to back up those appointments with his own helpfulness and prestige.

When we parted in Philadelphia, I to return to my home in Orange and he to go on to meet this vital moment of his career, I remember feeling a poignant anxiety about the result of the election, and it can well be understood the joy I felt that evening when the returns proved him overwhelmingly successful at the polls. Late at night, we received a telegram from the White House directed to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Robinson in answer to our wire sent earlier in the evening. It ran as follows: “Was glad to hear from you. Only wish you were with us this evening.” The next morning I received a letter, only a few lines but infinitely characteristic. They were penned by my brother upon his arrival at the White House after we had parted in Philadelphia, some hours before he knew anything of the election returns. In this letter he describes his sudden reaction from the condition of nervous excitement from which he had suffered during the day. He says: “As I mounted the White House steps, Edith came to meet me at the door, and I suddenly realized that, after all, no matter what the outcome of the election should prove to be; my happiness was assured, even though my ambition to have the seal of approval put upon my administration might not be gratified,—for my life with Edith and my children constitutes my happiness.” This little note posted to me on the eve of his great victory showed clearly his sense of proportion and his conception of true values.

On November 11, 1904, he writes again: “Darling Corinne: I received your letter. I have literally but one moment in which to respond, for I am swamped with letters and telegrams. We have received between eight and ten thousand. I look forward with keen eagerness to seeing you and Douglas.” And so the crucial moment was over, and by a greater majority than had ever before been known in this country, the man of destiny had come into his own, and Theodore Roosevelt, acclaimed by all the people whom he had served so faithfully, was, in his own right and through no sad misfortune, President of the United States of America.

Almost immediately after the excitement of the election, namely, on November 12, 1904, my brother writes to my husband: “If you and Corinne could come on with us to the St. Louis Fair, it would be the greatest possible delight. Now, for Heaven’s sake, don’t let anything interfere with both of your coming.”

Needless to say, we accepted the invitation joyfully, and the trip to the St. Louis Fair was one of our most unique experiences. Coming as it did almost immediately after the great victory of his overwhelming election, wherever the train stopped he received a tremendous ovation, and my memory of him during the transit is equally one of cheering groups and swarming delegations.

In spite of the noise and general excitement, whenever he had a spare moment of quiet, I noticed that he always returned to his own special seat in a corner of the car, and became at once completely absorbed in two large volumes which were always ready on his chair for him. The rest of us would read irrelevantly, perhaps, talk equally irrelevantly, and the hours sped past; but my brother, when he was not actually receiving delegations or making an occasional impromptu speech at the rear end of the car to the patient, waiting groups who longed to show him their devotion, would return in the most detached and focussed manner to the books in which he absorbed himself.

Our two days at St. Louis were the type of days only led by a presidential party at a fair. Before experiencing them I had thought it would be rather “grand” to be a President’s sister, with the aforesaid President when he opened a great fair. “Grand” it certainly was, but the exhaustion outbalanced the grandeur. I ran steadily for forty-eight hours without one moment’s intermission. My brother never seemed to walk at all, and my whole memory of the St. Louis Fair is a perpetual jog-trot, only interrupted by interminable receptions, presentations of gifts, lengthy luncheons and lengthier evening banquets, and I literally remember no night at all! Whether we never went to bed during the time we were at the fair, or exactly what happened to the nights after twelve o’clock, is more than I can say. At the end of the time allotted for the fair, after the last long banquet, we returned to our private car, and I can still see the way in which my sister-in-law (she was not born a Roosevelt!) fell into her stateroom. I was about to follow her example (it was midnight) when my brother turned to me in the gayest possible manner and said: “Not going to bed, are you!” “Well,” I replied, “I had thought of it.” “But no,” he said; “I told my stenographer this morning to rest all day, for I knew that I would need her services to-night, and now she is perfectly rested.” I interrupted him: “But, Theodore, you never told me to rest all day. I have been following you all day—” He laughed, but firmly said: “Sit right down here. You will be sorry if you go to bed. I am going to do something that is very interesting. William Rhodes has asked me to review his second and third volumes of the ‘History of the United States.’ You may have noticed I was reading those volumes on the way from Washington. I feel just like doing it now. The stenographer is rested, and as for you, it will do you a great deal of good, because you don’t know as much as you should about American history.” Smilingly he put me in a chair and began his dictation. Lord Morley is reported to have said, after his visit to the United States, when asked what he thought most interesting in our country: “There are two great things in the United States: one is Niagara, the other is Theodore Roosevelt.” As I think of my brother that night, Lord Morley’s words come back to me, for it seemed as if, for once, the two great things were combined in one. Such a Niagara as flowed from the lips of Theodore Roosevelt would have surprised even the brilliant English statesman. He never once referred to the books themselves, but he ran through the whole gamut of their story, suggesting here, interpolating there, courteously referring to some slight inaccuracy, taking up occasionally almost a page of the matter (referring to the individual page without ever glancing at the book), and finally, at 5 A.M., with a satisfied aspect, he turned to me and said: “That is all about ‘Rhodes’s History.’”

I rose feebly to my feet and said: “Good night, darling.” But not at all—still gaily, as if he had just begun a day’s work, instead of having reached the weary, littered end of twenty-four hours, he said once more: “Don’t go to bed. I must do one other piece of work, and I think you would be especially interested in it. Peter Dunne—‘Dooley,’ you know—has sent me an article of his on the Irish Question, and wants a review on that from me. I am very fond of Dunne, and really feel I should like to give him my opinions, as they do not entirely agree with his in this particular article. I feel like doing this now. Sit down again.” He never asked me to do anything with him that I ever refused, were it in my power to assent to his suggestion. How I rejoice to think that this was the case, and there was no exception made to my usual rule at 5 A.M. that November morning. I sat down again, and sure enough, in a few moments all fatigue seemed to vanish from me, as I listened with eager interest to his masterly review of Peter Dunne’s opinions on the Irish situation at that moment. It was a little late, or perhaps one might say a little early, to begin so complicated a subject as the Irish Question, and my final memories of his dictation are confused with the fact that at about 7 A.M. one of the colored porters came in with coffee, and shortly after that I was assisted to my berth in a more or less asphyxiated condition, from which I never roused again until the train reached the station at Washington. That was the way in which Theodore Roosevelt did work. I have often thought that if some of us always had the book at hand that we wanted to read, instead of wasting time in looking for it, if we always had clearly in our minds the extra job we wanted to do, and the tools at hand with which to do it, we might accomplish in some small degree the vast numbers of things he accomplished because of preparedness.

As early as December 19, 1904, my sister-in-law wrote me: “Theodore says that he wants you and Douglas under his roof for the Inauguration.” I always felt a deep appreciation of the fact that both my brother and his wife made us so welcome at the most thrilling moments of their life in the White House.

In January, 1905, he came to stay with me in New York to speak at several dinners, and a most absurd and yet trying incident occurred, an incident which he met with his usual sunny and unselfish good humor. We had had a large luncheon for him at my home, and when the time came for him to dress in the evening for the dinner at which he was to speak, I suddenly heard a call from the third story, a pitiful call: “I don’t think I have my own dress coat.” I ran up-stairs, and sure enough the coat laid out with his evening clothes, when he tried to put it on, proved to be so tight across his broad shoulders that whenever he moved his hands it rose unexpectedly almost to his ears. I called my butler, who insisted that he had taken the President’s coat with the rest of his clothes to brush, and had brought it back again to his room. This, however, was untrue, for the awful fact was soon divulged that the extra waiter engaged for the luncheon, and who had already left the house, had apparently confused the President’s coat, which was in the basement to be pressed, with his own, and had taken away the President’s coat! No one knew at this man’s house where he had gone. There seemed no method of tracing the coat. We dressed my brother in my husband’s coat, but that was even worse, for my husband’s coat fell about him in folds, and there seemed nothing for it but to send him to the large public dinner with a coat that, unless most cleverly manipulated, continued to rise unexpectedly above his head. No one but my brother would have taken this catastrophe with unruffled gaiety, but he started off apparently perfectly contented, rather than give me a more dejected feeling than I already had about the misadventure. I, myself, was to go later to the dinner to hear his speech from one of the boxes, and I shall never forget my trepidation when he began his address, as I saw the coat slowly rising higher and higher. At the most critical moment, when it seemed about to surmount his head, a messenger-boy, flurried and flushed with exertion, ran upon the stage with a package in his hand. The recalcitrant waiter had been found by my butler, and the President’s coat had been torn from his back. Excusing himself for a moment, with a laughing gesture which brought the coat completely over his head he retired into the wings, changed the article in question, and a few moments later brought down the whole house by his humorous account of the reason for his retirement.

On March 3, 1905, as the guests of my cousin Emlen Roosevelt, who took a special car for the occasion, the members of my family, my husband, and myself started for the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt as President. Memories crowd about me of those two or three days at the White House. The atmosphere was one of great family gaiety, combined with an underlying seriousness which showed the full realization felt by my brother of the great duties which he was again to assume this time as the choice of the people.

What a day it was, that inaugural day! As usual, the personal came so much into it. The night before, Mr. John Hay sent him a ring with a part of the lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair which John Hay himself had cut from the dead President’s forehead almost immediately after his assassination. I have never known my brother to receive a gift for which he cared so deeply. To wear that ring on the day of his own inauguration as President of the United States, elected to the office by the free will of the great American people, was to him, perhaps, the highest fulfilment of his desires. The day dawned dark and threatening and with snow filtering through the clouds, but occasionally rifts of sunlight broke through the sombre bank of gray. The ceremonies were fraught, to those of us who loved him so deeply, with great solemnity. The Vice-President taking his oath in the senate-chamber, the arrival there of the judges of the Supreme Court, the glittering uniforms of the foreign ambassadors and their suites, the appearance of the President-elect, and our withdrawal to the porch of the Capitol, from which he was to make his inaugural address—all of this remains indelibly impressed upon my mind. His solemn, ardent words as he dedicated himself afresh to the service of the country, the great crowd straining to hear each sentence, the eager attitude of the guard of honor (his beloved Rough Riders)—all made a vivid picture never to be forgotten. An eye-witness wrote as follows: “Old Chief Justice Fuller with his beautiful white hair and his long, judicial gown administered the oath, and Roosevelt repeated it so loudly that he could be heard in spite of the wind. In fact the wind rather added to the impressiveness than otherwise, as it gave the President a chance to throw back his shoulders to resist it, and that gave you a wonderful feeling of strength that went splendidly with the speech itself. The speech was short, and was mainly a plea for the ‘Peace of Justice’ as compared with the ‘Peace of the Coward.’ It was very stirring. The applause was tremendous.”

I would have my readers remember that when Theodore Roosevelt pleaded for such a peace it was in 1905, nine years before peace was broken by the armies of the Huns, and during those long years he never once failed to preach that doctrine, and to the last moment of his life abhorred and denounced the peace of the coward.

Following quickly on his inaugural speech came the luncheon at the White House, at which friends from New York were as cordially welcomed as were Bill Sewall’s large family from the Maine woods and Will Merrifield, who, now a marshal, brought the greetings of the State of Montana. After luncheon we all went out on the reviewing-stand. The President stood at the front of the box, his hat always off in response to the salutes. The great procession lasted for hours—West Pointers and naval cadets followed by endless state organizations, governors on horseback, cowboys waving their lassos and shouting favorite slogans (they even lassoed a couple of men, en passant), Chief Joseph, the grand old man of the Nez PercÉ tribe, gorgeously caparisoned, his brilliant head-dress waving in the wind, followed by a body of Indians only a shade less superb in costume, and then a hundred and fifty Harvard fellows in black gowns and caps—and how they cheered for the President as they passed the stand! Surely there was never before such an inauguration of any President in Washington. Never was there such a feeling of personal devotion in so many hearts. Other Presidents have had equal admiration, equal loyalty perhaps, but none has had that loyalty and admiration given by so liberal and varied a number of his fellow countrymen.

It was dark before we left the stand, and soon inside of the White House there followed a reception to the Rough Riders. What a happy time the President had with them recalling bygone adventures, while the Roosevelt and Robinson children ran merrily about listening to the wonderful stories and feeding the voracious Rough Riders. Later the President went bareheaded to the steps under the porte-cochÈre and received the cowboys, who rode past one after another, joyfully shaking hands with their old chief, ready with some joke for his special benefit, to which there was always a repartee. It was a unique scene as they cheered the incoming magnate under the old porte-cochÈre, and one never to be repeated. And then the Harvard men filed past to shake hands. Needless to say, dinner was rather late, though very merry, and we were all soon off to the inaugural ball. It was a beautiful sight, the hall enormous, with two rows of arches and pillars, one above the other, along each side. The floor was absolutely crowded with moving people, all with their faces straining up at our box. Ten thousand people bought tickets. Mr. Matthew Hale, then tutor to my nephew Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., has described the scene as follows: “The whole room was beautifully decorated with lights and wreaths and flowers. As I stood looking down on the great pageant I felt as though I were in some other world,—as though these people below there and moving in and out were not real people, but were all part of some great mechanism built for our special benefit. And then my feeling would change to the other extreme when I thought of each one of those men and women as individuals, each one thinking, and feeling and acting according to his own will,—and that all, just for that one night, came together for a common purpose, to see the President. Soon an open place appeared in the throng before us, and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, and behind them Vice-President and Mrs. Fairbanks, walked to the other end of the hall and back, while the people cheered and cheered.” And soon it was time to go back to the White House, and then, best of all, came what we used to call a “back-hair” talk in Theodore and Edith’s room. What fun we had as we talked the great day over in comfortable dÉshabille. A small round bottle of old wine was found somewhere by Mrs. Roosevelt, and the family drank the President’s health, and we talked of old times and childhood days, and of the dear ones whose hearts would have glowed so warmly had they lived to see that day. We laughed immoderately over all kinds of humorous happenings, and we could hardly bear to say “good night,” we still felt so gay, so full of life and fun, so invigorated and stimulated by the excitement and by the deeper thoughts and desires, which, however, only took the form that night of increasing hilarity!

Shortly after that March inauguration my daughter Corinne, just eighteen, was asked by her kind aunt to pay a visit at the White House, and I impressed upon her the wonderful opportunity she would have of listening to the great men of the world at the informal luncheon gatherings which were a feature of my brother’s incumbency. “Do not miss a word,” I said to my daughter. “Uncle Ted brings to luncheon all the great men in Washington—almost always several members of the cabinet, and any one of interest who is visiting there. Be sure and listen to everything. You will never hear such talk again.” When she returned home from that visit I eagerly asked her about the wonderful luncheons at the White House, where I had so frequently sat spellbound. My somewhat irreverent young daughter said: “Mother, I laughed internally all through the first luncheon at the White House during my visit. Uncle Ted was perfectly lovely to me, and took me by the hand and said: ‘Corinny, dear, you are to sit at my right hand to-day, and you must have the most delightful person in the room on your other side.’ With that he glanced at the distinguished crowd of gentlemen who were surrounding him waiting to be assigned to their places, and picking out a very elderly gentleman with a long white beard, he said with glowing enthusiasm: ‘You shall have John Burroughs, the great naturalist.’ I confess I had hoped for some secretary in the cabinet, but, no, Uncle Ted did not think there was any one in the world that compared in thrilling excitement to his wonderful old friend and lover of birds. Even so, I thought, ‘Mother would wish me to learn all about natural history, and I shall hear marvellous ornithological tales, even if politics must be put aside.’ But even in that I was somewhat disappointed, for at the very beginning of luncheon Uncle Ted leaned across me to Mr. Burroughs and said: ‘John, this morning I heard a chippy sparrow, and he sang twee, twee, right in my ear.’ Mr. Burroughs, with a shade of disapproval on his face, said: ‘Mr. President, you must be mistaken. It was not a chippy sparrow if it sang twee, twee. The note of the chippy sparrow is twee, twee, twee.’ From that moment the great affairs of our continent, the international crises of all kinds were utterly forgotten, while the President of the United States and his esteemed guest, the great naturalist, discussed with a good deal of asperity whether that chippy sparrow had said ‘twee, twee,’ or ‘twee, twee, twee.’ We rose from the table with the question still unsettled.” My brother always loved to hear my daughter tell this story, although his face would assume a somewhat sheepish expression as she dilated on the difference between her mother’s prognostications of what a luncheon at the White House would mean from an intellectual standpoint, and what the realization actually became!

In spite of my daughter’s experience, however, I can say with truth that there never were such luncheons as those luncheons at the White House during my brother’s life there. The secretary of state, Mr. Elihu Root, with his unusual knowledge, his pregnant wit, and quiet, brilliant sarcasm; the secretary of war, Mr. Taft, with his gay smile and ready response; Mr. Moody, the attorney-general with his charming culture and universal kindliness, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the brilliant scholar and statesman, my brother’s most intimate friend and constant companion, were frequent members of the luncheon-parties, and always, the most distinguished visitor to Washington, from whatever country or from whatever State of our own country, would be brought in with the same informal hospitality and received for the time being by President and Mrs. Roosevelt into the intimacy of family life. The whole cabinet would occasionally adjourn from one of their most important meetings to the lunch-table, and then the President and Mr. Root would cap each other’s stories of the way in which this or that question had been discussed during the cabinet meeting. I doubt also if ever there were quite such cabinet meetings as were held during those same years!

That spring Mr. Robinson and I took my daughter to Porto Rico to visit Governor and Mrs. Beekman Winthrop. My brother believed strongly in young men, and having admired the intelligence of young Beekman Winthrop (he came of a fine old New York family) as circuit judge in the Philippines, he decided to make him governor of Porto Rico. He was only twenty-nine, and his charming wife still younger, but they made a most ideal couple as administrators of the beautiful island. After having been with them in the old palace for about a week, and having enjoyed beyond measure all that was so graciously arranged for us, I was approached one day by Governor Winthrop, who told me that he was much distressed at the behavior of a certain official and that he felt sure that the President would not wish the man to remain in office, for he was actually a disgrace to the United States. “Mrs. Robinson,” he said, “will you not go to the President on your return, and tell him that I am quite sure he would not wish to retain this man in office? I know the President likes us to work with the tools which have been given us, and I dislike beyond measure to seem not to be able to do so, but I am convinced that this man should not represent the United States in this island.” “Have you your proofs, Beekman?” I asked. “I should not be willing to approach my brother with any such criticism without accurate proofs.” “I most assuredly have them,” he answered, and sure enough he did have them, and I shortly afterward sailed with them back to New York. Immediately upon my arrival I telegraphed my brother as follows: “Would like to see you on Porto Rican business. When shall I come?” One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most striking characteristics was the rapidity with which he answered letters or telegrams. One literally felt that one had not posted a letter or sent the telegram rushing along the wire before the rapid answer came winging back again, and that particular telegram was no exception to the rule. I had rather hoped for a week’s quiet in which to get settled after my trip to Porto Rico, but that was not to be. The rapid-fire answer read as follows: “Come tomorrow.” Of course there was nothing for me to do but go “tomorrow.” It was late in April, and as I drove up to the White House from the station, I thought how lovely a city was Washington in the springtime. The yellow forsythias gave a golden glow to the squares, and the soft hanging petals of the fringe-trees waved in the scented air. I never drove under the White House porte-cochÈre without a romantic feeling of excitement at the realization that it was my brother, lover of Lincoln, lover of America, who lived under the roof which symbolized all that America means to her children. As I went up the White House steps, he blew out of the door, dressed for his ride on horseback. His horse and that of a companion were waiting for him. He came smilingly toward me, welcomed me, and said: “Edie has had to go to Philadelphia for the night to visit Nellie Tyler, so we are all alone, and I have ordered dinner out on the back porch, for it is so warm and lovely, and there is a full moon, and I thought we could be so quiet there. I have so much to tell you. All sorts of political things have happened during your absence, and besides that I have learned several new poems of Kipling and Swinburne, and I feel like reciting them to you in the moonlight!” “How perfectly lovely,” I replied, “and when shall I see you about Porto Rico?” A slight frown came on his brow, and he said, “Certainly not to-night,” and then rather sternly: “You have your appointment at nine o’clock to-morrow morning in the office to discuss business matters.” Then with a returning smile: “I will be back pretty soon. Good-by.” And he jumped on his horse and clattered away toward Rock Creek.

It all came true, although it almost seemed like a fairy-tale. We had that dinner À deux on the lovely portico at the rear of the White House looking toward the Washington Monument—that portico was beautifully reproduced by Sargent’s able brush for Mrs. Roosevelt later—and under the great, soft moon, with the scent of shrub and flower in the air, he recited Kipling and Swinburne, and then falling into more serious vein, gave me a vivid description of some difficulty he had had with Congress, which had refused to receive a certain message which he had written and during the interval between the sending of it and their final decision to receive it, he had shut himself up in his library, glad to have a moment of unexpected leisure, and had written an essay, which he had long desired to write, on the Irish sagas. The moon had waned and the stars were brighter and deeper before we left the portico. We never could go to bed when we were together, and I am so glad that we never did!

The next morning I knocked at his door at eight o’clock, to go down to the early breakfast with the children, which was one of the features also, quite as much as were the brilliant lunches, of home life in the White House. He came out of his dressing-room radiant and smiling, ready for the day’s work, looking as if he had had eight hours of sleep instead of five, and rippling all over with the laughter which he always infused into those family breakfasts. As we passed the table at the head of the staircase, at which later in the day my sister’s secretary wrote her letters, the telephone-bell on the table rang, and with spontaneous simplicity—not even thinking of ringing a bell for a “menial” to answer the telephone-call—he picked up the receiver himself as he passed by. His face assumed a listening look, and then a broad smile broke over his features. “No,” he said. “No, I am not Archie, I am Archie’s father.” A second passed and he laughed aloud, and then said: “All right, I will tell him; I won’t forget.” Hanging up the receiver, he turned to me half-sheepishly but very much amused. “That’s a good joke on any President,” he said. “You may have realized that there was a little boy on the other end of that wire, and he started the conversation by saying, ‘Is that you, Archie?’ and I replied, ‘No, it is Archie’s father.’ Whereupon he answered, with evident disgust: ‘Well, you’ll do. Be sure and tell Archie to come to supper. Now, don’t forget.’ ‘How the creatures order you about!’” he gaily quoted from our favorite book, “Alice in Wonderland,” and proceeded to run at full speed down to the breakfast-room. There the children greeted us vociferously, and the usual merry breakfast ensued. For that half-hour he always belonged to the children. Questions and answers about their school life, their recreation when out of school, etc., etc., followed in rapid succession, interspersed with various fascinating tales told by him for their special edification.

After they had dispersed there was still a half-hour left before he went to the office at 9 o’clock, and whenever I visited the White House (my visits were rather rare, as my husband, being a busy real-estate broker in New York, could not often break away) that half-hour was always given to me, and we invariably walked around the great circle at the back of the White House. It was his most vigorous moment of the day, that hour from 8.30 to 9. He had not yet met the puzzling defeats and compromises necessitated by the conflicting interests of the many appointments in the office, and he was fresh and vivid, interested in the problems that were to be brought to him for solution that day, and observant of everything around him. I remember that morning as we walked around the circle he was discussing a very serious problem that had to be decided immediately, and he held his forefinger straight up, and said: “You know my temperament always wants to get there”—putting his other forefinger on the apex of the first. “I naturally wish to reach the goal of my desire, but would I not be very blind and stupid if, because I couldn’t get there, I decided to stay here” [changing his right forefinger to the base of the left] “rather than get here”—finishing his simile by placing the right finger to the third notch of the finger on his other hand.

Just as he was finishing this simile his eye caught sight of a tiny object on the pathway, so minute a little brown spot that I should never have noticed it; but he stooped, picked it up, and held it between his forefinger and thumb, looking at it eagerly, and then muttering somewhat below his breath: “Very early for a fox-sparrow.” He threw the tiny piece of fluff again upon the path. “How do you know that that was a feather from a fox-sparrow, Theodore?” I said, in my usual astonishment at his observation and information. “I can understand how you might know it was a sparrow, but how know it belonged to the fox-sparrow rather than to any of the other innumerable little creatures of that species?” He was almost deprecatory in his manner as he said in reply: “Well, you see I have really made a great study of sparrows.” And then we were back at the entrance to the White House, and in a moment I leaned out of the dining-room window and watched him walk across the short space between that window and the office, his head thrown back, his shoulders squared to meet the difficulties of the day, and every bit of him alert, alive, and glowing with health and strength and power and mentality.

I went up-stairs, put on my “best bib and tucker,” and proceeded to go around the other way to the front door of the offices. As I rang the bell the dear old man who always opened the door greeted me warmly, and said: “Yes, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, your appointment is at 9. It is just time.” I went into the outer hall, where a number of the appointees of 9.15, 9.30, etc., were already waiting, to be surely on hand for their appointments, and in a moment or two Mr. Loeb opened the door of the private office of the President, and came out into the hall and said in a rather impersonal way, “Mrs. Douglas Robinson’s appointment,” and I was shown into the room. My brother was seated at a large table, and on it was every imaginable paper marked “Porto Rico.” As I entered he was still reading one of these papers. He looked up, and I almost felt a shock as I met what seemed to be a pair of perfectly opaque blue eyes. I could hardly believe they were the eyes of the brother with whom I had so lately parted, the eyes that had glistened as he recited the poems of Kipling and Swinburne, the eyes that had almost closed to see better the tiny breast-fluff of the fox-sparrow. These were rather cold eyes, the eyes of a just judge, eyes that were turned upon his sister as they would have been turned upon any other individual who came to him in connection with a question about which he must give his most careful and deliberate decision. He waved me to a chair, finished the paper he was reading, and then turning to me, his eyes still stern and opaque, he said: “I believe you have come to see me on business connected with Porto Rico. Kindly be as condensed as possible.” I decided to meet him on his own ground, and made my eyes as much like his as possible, and was as condensed as possible. Having listened carefully to my short story, he said: “Have you proof of this?” still rather sternly. Again I decided to answer as he asked, and I replied: “I should not be here, wasting your time and mine, did I not have adequate proof.” With that I handed him the notes made by the governor of Porto Rico, and proceeded to explain them. He became a little less severe after reading them, but no less serious, and turning to me more gently, said: “This is a very serious matter. I have got to be sure of the correctness of these statements. A man’s whole future hangs upon my decision.” For a moment I felt like an executioner, but realizing as I did the shocking and disgraceful behavior of the official in question, I knew that no sentimentality on my part should interfere with the important decision to be made, and I briefly backed up all that the governor had written. I can still hear the sound of the President’s pen as he took out the paper on which the man’s name was inscribed, and with one strong stroke effaced that name from official connection with Porto Rico forever. That was the way that Theodore Roosevelt did business with his sister.

During that same year, 1905, the old ProvenÇal poet FrÉdÉric Mistral sent him his volume called “Mireille,” and the acknowledgment of the book seems to me to express more than almost any other letter ever written by my brother the spirit which permeated his whole life. It shows indisputably that though he had reached the apex of his desires, that though he was a great President of a great country, perhaps the most powerful ruler at the moment of any country, that his ideals for that country, just as his ideals for himself and for his own beloved home life, were what they had always been before the sceptre of power had been clasped by his outstretched hand.

White House, Washington,
December 15, 1905.

My dear M. Mistral:

Mrs. Roosevelt and I were equally pleased with the book and the medal, and none the less because for nearly twenty years we have possessed a copy of Mireille. That copy we shall keep for old association’s sake, though this new copy with the personal inscription by you must hereafter occupy the place of honor.

All success to you and your associates! You are teaching the lesson that none need more to learn than we of the West, we of the eager, restless, wealth-seeking nation; the lesson that after a certain not very high level of material well-being has been reached, then the things that really count in life are the things of the spirit. Factories and railways are good up to a certain point, but courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in man’s work and in nature, love and emulation of daring and of lofty endeavour, the homely work-a-day virtues and the heroic virtues—these are better still, and if they are lacking, no piled-up riches, no roaring, clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall avail either the individual or the nation. I do not undervalue these things of a nation’s body; I only desire that they shall not make us forget that beside the nation’s body there is also the nation’s soul.

Again thanking you on behalf of both of us, believe me,

Faithfully yours,
(Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.

To M. FrÉdÉric Mistral.

No wonder that Mistral turned to a friend after reading that letter and said with emotion: “It is he who is the new hope of humanity.”