¥ELT 
 
Good Stories 
 About Roosevelt 
 
 The Humorous Side 
 of a Great American 
 
 ^ Bv CARLETON B. CASE 
 
 SHREWESBURY PUBLISHING CO. 
 CHICAGO 
 
.C33 
 
 I 
 
 Copyright, 1920 
 
 BY 
 
 SHREWESBURY PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 J 
 
 ■■"lit 
 
 ^, 
 
 C!.A570345 I' 
 
 JUN 14 19^0 
 
Good Stor ies 
 About Roosevelt 
 
 HIS LOVE OF FUN 
 
 There is nothing in human beings at once so 
 sane and so sympathetic as a sense of humor. 
 This great gift the good fairies conferred upon 
 Theodore Roosevelt at his birth in unstinted 
 measure. No man ever had a more abundant 
 sense of humor — ^joyous, irrepressible humor — 
 and it never deserted him. Even at the most 
 serious and even perilous moments if there was 
 a gleam of humor anywhere he saw it and re- 
 joiced and helped himself with it over the rough 
 places. He loved fun, loved to joke and chaff, 
 and, what is more uncommon, greatly enjoyed 
 being chaffed himself. His ready smile and con- 
 tagious laugh made countless friends and saved 
 him from many an enmity. 
 
 The life of Theodore Roosevelt was a succes- 
 sion of dynamic events, and he put action into 
 everything with which he came into contact. As 
 President he fought red tape continually, was 
 always impatient with the slow functioning of 
 Congress, and spoke his mind freely. There 
 were besides so many novel events in his career 
 
4 GOOD STORIES 
 
 that good stories about him are told in abun- 
 dance. Many of these anecdotes are reproduced 
 in this book, including a large number that illus- 
 trate his amazing energy and versatility. 
 
 OVERCOMING HANDICAPS 
 
 As a boy the young Theodore was puny and 
 sickly; but with that indomitable determination 
 which characterized him in every act of his life, 
 he entered upon the task of transforming his 
 feeble body not merely into a strong one, but 
 into one of the strongest. How well he succeeded 
 every American knows. This physical feeble- 
 ness bred in him nervousness and self-distrust, 
 and in the same indomitable way he set himself 
 to change his character as he changed his body, 
 and to make himself a man of self-confidence 
 and courage. He has told the story himself in 
 his autobiography: 
 
 "When a boy I read a passage in one of Cap- 
 tain Marryat's books which always impressed me. 
 In the passage the captain of some small British 
 man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to ac- 
 quire the quality of fearlessness. He says that 
 at the outset almost every man is frightened 
 when he goes into action, but that the course 
 to follow is for the man to keep such a grip 
 on himself that he can act just as if he was not 
 frightened. After this is kept up long enough 
 it changes from pretense to reality, and the man 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 5 
 
 does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint 
 of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel 
 it. (I am using- my own language, not Marryat's.) 
 This was the theory upon which I went. There 
 were all kinds of things which I was afraid of 
 first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses 
 and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not 
 afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most 
 men can have the same experience if they choose. 
 They will first learn to bear themselves well in 
 trials, which they anticipate and school them- 
 selves in advance to meet. After awhile the 
 habit will grow on them, and they will behave 
 well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which 
 come upon them unawares." 
 
 HE GOES TO BILL SEWALL 
 
 Just before entering Harvard, Roosevelt, on the 
 advice of two of his cousins, took a step which 
 had a lasting influence on his life. They sent 
 him down in Maine to their old guide, Bill Sewall 
 of Island Falls. With this born woodsman he 
 learned to know and love the wilderness. There 
 he developed tastes which later led him out into 
 the wild West, to be a ranchman, a hunter, and 
 finally the organizer of the Rough Riders, things 
 which have done so much to shape his fortunes. 
 Besides, he made a lifelong friend of Bill Sewall, 
 as true a one as he could count among all his 
 friendships. 
 
6 GOOD STORIES 
 
 Island Falls was then beyond the railway and 
 on the very edge of the immense wild lands of 
 the Pine Tree State. In that village the pale, 
 stoop-shouldered young gentleman from New 
 York made himself at home, and one of the vil- 
 lagers has declared: "Every one in the Falls 
 liked him, for he was as plain as a spruce board 
 and as square as a brick." He lived like a son 
 in the simple home of the backwoodsman and 
 tramped and camped with Bill as a chum. 
 
 The experience was an object lesson in democ- 
 racy, which was not lost on his youthful imag- 
 ination. It helped him to learn that no little 
 caste of well-to-do city people and college grad- 
 uates, no Four Hundred, could boast all the wis- 
 dom and virtue of the race. He found that there 
 was much that a Knickerbocker could gain by 
 association with an aristocrat of the forest. It 
 recalls to mind the old, old story of the learned 
 man in the boat of the fisherman: — 
 
 "Don't you know the rules of syntax?" the 
 pedant asked. 
 
 "No," the fisherman answered. 
 
 "Then one-fourth of your life is lost. Do you 
 know algebra?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then one-half of your life is lost. Do you 
 know geometry?" But before the fisherman 
 could confess his ignorance of this latter branch 
 of learning, a huge wave upset the boat and cast 
 both him and the professor into the water. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 7 
 
 "Do you know how to swim?" he shouted to 
 the professor. 
 
 "No," the poor man cried. 
 
 "Then the whole of your life is lost.'' 
 
 Roosevelt was learning to value men according 
 to what they knew, rather than by what they 
 did not know. 
 
 In his days with the Sewalls he did not go for 
 big game and "he never could keep still long 
 enough to fish." He shot his first deer while in 
 the Adirondacks, and in Maine he was content to 
 roam the primeval forest, sleep with Bill in his 
 hunting hut and bag enough birds for their 
 meals. His guide had been appealed to by Theo- 
 dore's cousins to watch that he did not try to do 
 more than his strength warranted. But "he 
 wouldn't let any one else lug his gun," Bill said, 
 "or help him out in any way. He never shirked 
 his share of anything, no matter how played out 
 he might be. The boy was grit clear through." 
 
 Again and again he would return to his good 
 friends in the woods for a vacation from college 
 studies. Once at least he went only in time to 
 save himself from a physical breakdown. Al- 
 ways he found abundant healing in the midst of 
 nature and each time he brought himself nearer 
 to his constant goal, a vigorous body. 
 
 NO COLLEGE HONORS 
 
 When he graduated from Harvard he stood 
 twenty-second in his class, which, by the way, 
 
8 GOOD STORIES 
 
 was about the same as Grant's rank at West 
 Point. He won few academic honors. No Com- 
 mencement part fell to him and the only mention 
 he received was in natural history. 
 
 SPORT AT HARVARD 
 
 His boxing is best remembered at Harvard of 
 all his sporting activities. His delicate appear- 
 ance amazed those who saw him make his first 
 ventures with the gloves in the gymnasium. He 
 weighed only one hundred and thirty and was a 
 very doubtful-looking entry in the light-weight 
 class. Besides, he had to go into combat with 
 a pair of big spectacles lashed to his head, a bad 
 handicap, which put his eyesight in peril every 
 time he boxed. To offset this disadvantage, he 
 aimed to lead swiftly and heavily and thus put 
 his opponent on the defensive from the start. 
 
 Not a few old Harvard men recall a character- 
 istic instance of Roosevelt's sportsmanlike bear- 
 ing. He was in the midst of a hot encounter 
 when time was called. He prornptly dropped 
 his hands to his side, whereupon his antagonist 
 dealt him a heavy blow squarely on his nose. 
 There was an instant cry of "Foul, foul," from 
 the sympathetic onlookers and a scene of noisy 
 excitement followed. Above the uproar, Roose- 
 velt, his face covered with blood, was heard 
 shouting at the top of his voice, as he ran toward 
 the referee, "Stop! stop! he didn't hear! he 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 9 
 
 didn't hear!" Then he shook the hand of the 
 other youth warmly, and the emotion of the little 
 crowd changed from scorn of his opponent to 
 admiration of him. 
 
 He may never have come in first, as he has 
 said, but he was always so ready, even to meet 
 the class champion himself, and took the knocks 
 in such good part that he never was second in 
 the regard of all who delighted in pluck. More- 
 over, he did not go in to win so much as to get 
 out of the game all the fun and exercise he 
 could. Sport for sport's sake was his standard. 
 He did not adopt base ball, foot-ball, or any form 
 of team work or spectacular display. He was 
 spared, therefore, the fate of too many athletes, 
 who let their play become the serious business 
 of their college days, and whose false point of 
 view works them a lifelong injury by stunting 
 their minds and warping their characters. 
 
 TOO MUCH FOR THE CHURCHMEN 
 
 Nothing better shows the even balance which 
 Roosevelt kept than that while he was active 
 in the gymnasium, he w^as also active in the Sun- 
 day school. He had joined the old church of his 
 fathers, the Dutch Reformed, in New York, be- 
 fore going to Harvard. There being no church 
 of his denomination in Cambridge, however, he 
 took a class in an Episcopal Sunday school. 
 
 He had learned the spirit of service from his 
 
10 GOOD STORIES 
 
 father. He must not live unto himself alone ; he 
 must feel he was doing something for others. He 
 got along famously with his boys. When one of 
 them came into the class with a black eye, the 
 teacher questioned him earnestly about it. The 
 boy explained, with manifest truthfulness, that 
 his sister had been pinched by a boy who sat 
 beside her. He had told the offender to stop and 
 he would not stop, whereupon the gallant brother 
 had fought for her. 
 
 "You did perfectly right," said Roosevelt, the 
 muscular Christian, and he gave him a dollar as 
 a poultice for the black eye. The class hailed 
 this as a fine example of justice, and drew nearer 
 than before to their teacher, for there is no way 
 to get a firmer grip on a boy's heart than by 
 taking his part in battle. Some of the grave 
 elders of the parish, however, hearing of the 
 matter, were much displeased. In the end, Roose- 
 velt left this field of labor and found a class in a 
 Congregational Sunday school. 
 
 IN HIS NIGHTGOWN 
 
 Another remembered incident of his Cambridge 
 life shows how well he had gained that readiness 
 to act in any situation, which was one of his 
 marked traits at all times. A horse in a stable 
 adjoining his lodgings aroused the neighborhood 
 in the dead of night by a noise that indicated it 
 was in sore trouble. Half a dozen men got up 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 11 
 
 and dressed and went to the rescue, only to find, 
 when they reached the stable, that Roosevelt 
 was already on the scene and doing the needed 
 thing to relieve the poor beast. For he had not 
 stopped to dress nor even to take time to walk 
 downstairs. He had gone to the rescue out of a 
 second-story back window, and climbed down a 
 piazza post in his night clothes. 
 
 STRANGE PETS AT HOME 
 
 President Roosevelt taught his boys to shoot 
 and box, to swim and row and ride. He tried to 
 teach them not to be afraid of anything. Their 
 country place at Oyster Bay swarmed with all 
 kinds of strange pets. A little girl out in Kansas 
 threw a live badger on the platform of the Presi- 
 dent's car, and he brought the queer thing home 
 for his children. They had a lot of fun with him 
 in spite of his habit of biting their bare legs. 
 First and last they had such playfellows as a 
 lion, a hyena, a wild-cat, a coyote, two big par- 
 rots, five bears, an eagle, a barn owl, several 
 snakes and lizards, a zebra which the Emperor 
 of Abyssinia sent them, kangaroo-rats and flying 
 squirrels, rabbits, and guinea-pigs. 
 
 Many of these animals and reptiles were thrust 
 upon the family as gifts, and after a time were 
 added to the public zoological collection in New 
 York. The kangaroo-rats and flying squirrels 
 slept in the pockets and blouses of the children, 
 
12 GOOD STORIES 
 
 whence they sometimes made unexpected appear- 
 ances at the breakfast and dinner table or in 
 school. 
 
 DOGS, AND MORE DOGS 
 
 There were dogs without number, for dogs 
 liked the President. They would bound out to 
 welcome him, and he would call each by name 
 and give him a fond pat. Once when he was in 
 a theatre box in Washington a dog strayed out 
 on the stage, and, stretching himself, yawned 
 loud and long. There was a roar of laughter 
 from the audience, in which Mr. Roosevelt's voice 
 was by no means lost. At any rate, the dog 
 heard it, and turned to look at him. In another 
 second he leaped from the stage into the box and 
 settled himself in the President's lap. By this 
 time the play and players were forgotten by the 
 people as they watched the Presidential box, and 
 the performance could not go on until the Presi- 
 dent had leaned over and set his four-footed 
 friend upon the stage. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt had a like experience with a dog 
 while on a bear hunt in Colorado. A little black 
 and tan in the hunting pack picked him as his 
 favorite. Skip would run forty miles a day on 
 the chase, but liked best a front seat on the 
 President's horse. At night he would sleep on 
 the foot of his bed, and growl defiance at anybody 
 and anything that came near. *T grew attached 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 13 
 
 to the friendly, bright little fellow," the Presi- 
 dent confessed, "and at the end of the hunt I 
 took him home as a playmate for the children." 
 
 FATHER O'GRADY HAS BABIES 
 
 Some of Skip's new companions at Oyster Bay 
 bore names far more imposing than his. There 
 was a black bear, with an uncertain temper, 
 whom the children had named Jonathan Edwards 
 in honor of the famous divine, who was an an- 
 cestor of their mother. There were guinea-pigs 
 who bore names in compliment to Bishop Doane 
 of Albany, Father O'Grady, a neighboring priest. 
 Dr. Johnson, Fighting Bob Evans, and Admiral 
 Dewey. A distinguished man, who was calling 
 on the President, did not understand this custom, 
 and therefore was bewildered to hear one of the 
 children rush in and breathlessly report, "Oh, oh, 
 Father O'Grady has had some children I" 
 
 ABOUT THAT PONY 
 
 Perhaps the most honored representative of the 
 animal kingdom at Oyster Bay was Algonquin, 
 a little calico pony from far-away Iceland, which 
 Secretary Hitchcock gave to Archie. Skip, as 
 well as Archie, delighted to ride Algonquin. 
 Nothing was too good for this Icelander, and 
 when a naval officer came to call in full-dress uni- 
 
14 GOOD STORIES 
 
 form, Archie was so impressed that he at once 
 ran to get Algonquin that he too might enjoy the 
 spectacle. The pageant was lost on him, how- 
 ever, and he would look at nothing except the 
 nice green grass in the lawn, which he nibbled 
 greedily. 
 
 But once when Archie was sick in the White 
 House, Algonquin made up for all past neglect. 
 The stable boys were sure that if the invalid 
 could have a visit from the pony it would do him 
 more good than medicine. They conspired to- 
 gether, secretly smuggled him into the basement 
 and into the elevator, and thus carried him up to 
 the sick-room, to the unbounded joy of the 
 patient. 
 
 ALL-NIGHT PICNICS 
 
 A red-letter day in the boy life at Oyster Bay 
 was when the President went picnicking. The 
 Roosevelt boys and their cousins, who lived near 
 by, would plan it all, and with the President row 
 off to some quiet cove, away from telephones and 
 Secret Service men. There they would catch 
 their fish and build a fire. The President would 
 turn cook before an admiring circle of youths, 
 who watched him with watering mouths while 
 he fried the fish or strips of beefsteak and thin 
 slices of potatoes. "You ought to taste my fa- 
 ther's steak," Archie boasted all the rest of the 
 year. "He tumbles it all in together, potatoes. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 15 
 
 onions, and steak. I tell you it's fine." After 
 supper the President told them stories of big 
 game out West, of mountain lions and grizzly 
 bears, while the little fellows watched the sha- 
 dows around them. One night they heard a fox 
 barking in the woods, which thrilled them 
 through and through, and they discussed the 
 chance of seeing him in the morning. And sure 
 enough they saw him running along the shore 
 while they and the President were in for their 
 early swim. 
 
 KEPT HIS PROMISE 
 
 The eternal boy in the President could always 
 hear the call of his boys. On a certain occasion 
 several of the boys came into the library while 
 he was talking with a man, and one of the cous- 
 ins spoke up: "Uncle, it's after four." "So it 
 is," the President replied, as he looked at the 
 clock. "Why didn't you call me sooner? One 
 of you get my rifle. I must ask you to excuse 
 me," he said, as he turned to his caller. "We'll 
 finish this talk later. I promised the boys I 
 would go shooting with them at four o'clock, and 
 I never keep them waiting. It's hard for a boy 
 to wait." 
 
 In order to give his boys a chance for rifle 
 practice he provided a two-hundred-yard range 
 at Oyster Bay. 
 
16 GOOD STORIES 
 
 WHY BOYS LOVED "TEDDY" 
 
 When Mr. Roosevelt was President, his great 
 friend, Jacob A. Riis, who had accompanied him 
 in earlier days on many a midnight expedition 
 through the slums of New York City, seeking to 
 do good, said of him: 
 
 "Boys admire President Roosevelt because he 
 himself Ms a good deal of a boy.' Some men 
 have claimed that Mr. Roosevelt never has ma- 
 tured; but this is saying no more than that he 
 has not stopped growing, that he is not yet 
 imprisoned in the crust of age. To him the 
 world is still young and unfinished. He has a 
 boy's fresh faith that the things that ought to 
 be done C3.n be done. His eyes are on the future 
 rather than on the past. 
 
 "Young America never drew so near to any 
 other public man as to Theodore Roosevelt. All 
 boys in the land feel that there is a kindred 
 spirit in the White House. Every one of them 
 knows 'Teddy' and the 'Teddy bear' and the 
 'Teddy hat.' But it is doubtful if the President 
 ever was called 'Teddy' when he was a boy. He 
 used to be 'Teedy' in the family circle and at 
 Harvard he was 'Ted,' while among the intimates 
 of his manhood he is always called 'Theodore.' 
 He is 'Teddy,' however, to millions of boys who 
 delight in their comradeship with the President 
 which this nickname implies. It does not mean 
 that they are lacking in respect for him ; it sim- 
 ply means that they are not afraid of him, and 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 17 
 
 that they feel they know him and he knows 
 them." 
 
 THE COLONEL AMONG CHILDREN 
 
 The Colonel had a way with youngsters. All 
 too little to know how to admire him loved him 
 on sight. The older ones did both. The stories 
 about him with children here and there are in- 
 numerable. His animosity toward race suicide 
 was no cold, abstract, sociological tenet. There 
 was the little invalid in Portland, Oregon, car- 
 ried to the curb on a stretcher to see him go 
 by, when he was passing through in 1903. He 
 noticed her, stopped the carriage, jumped out and 
 kissed her. 
 
 One day in February, 1911, when walking back 
 to the ofRce of The Outlook in New York after 
 luncheon, the Colonel found a lost nine-year-old, 
 newly arrived with his parents via Ellis Island, 
 crying in the streets, and dried the child's eyes 
 and took him to the East Twenty-third street 
 police station, where he turned him over to the 
 matron, and then swapped old memories with the 
 bluecoats behind the desk, one or two of whom 
 had been on the force when he was Commis- 
 sioner. 
 
 There are countless stories of his own, the 
 Roosevelt children, in and out of the White 
 House and at Sagamore Hill, and latterly there 
 were the photographs of him holding the grand- 
 
18 GOOD STORIES 
 
 babies. Of these stories, a favorite in its day 
 was about his httle boating and sleeping-out-in- 
 blankets expedition to a remote sand beach on 
 the Sound, his companions being Kermit, Archie 
 and their cousin Philip. The date was August 
 9, 1902. 
 
 The President and the three kids quietly stole 
 off to the bay, eluding all eyes but Secretary 
 Loeb's, and that was the evening when the Pa- 
 cific cables rumpus broke like a bombshell, and 
 telegrams and emissaries and magnates and re- 
 porters poured in vainly upon the Roosevelt 
 home. Mr. Loeb could not say where the Presi- 
 dent was and seemed embarrassed by it. The 
 four simple-lifers returned in the morning after 
 a bully time, and the business of a President on 
 vacation was: resumed. Subsequently such sleep- 
 ing-out excursions were a feature of every sum- 
 mer. 
 
 Then there was the autumn day in 1917 when 
 the Colonel sat for two hours at the elbow of 
 Justice Hoyt in Children's Court, New York, 
 heard the cases, and acted as unofficial consult- 
 ing Justice. Once, leaning over, he whispered to 
 a youngster, "It's all right this time, sonny. 
 You're all right. But remember, don't do it 
 again, or he'll send you away! He'll send you 
 away!" And again, after hearing how some 
 other juvenile malefactor of little wealth had 
 made full restitution to the pushcart man or 
 somebody, the Roosevelt fist thumped the arm of 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 19 
 
 the chair, with "That's a fine boy I That kind 
 make first-rate citizens!" 
 
 Soon after the Roosevelts took up their resi- 
 dence at the White House a fawning society 
 woman asked one of the younger boys if he did 
 not dislike the "common boys" he met at the pub- 
 lic schools. The boy looked at her in wonder- 
 ment for a moment and then replied : 
 
 "My papa says there are only tall boys and 
 short boys and good boys and bad boys, and 
 that's all the kind of boys there are." 
 
 When the leader of the Rough Riders returned 
 from the Spanish-American war he found all his 
 children congregated near a pole from which 
 floated a large flag of their own manufacture, 
 inscribed : 
 
 "To Colonel Roosevelt." 
 
 He said that the tribute touched him more 
 deeply than any of the pretentious demonstra- 
 tions accorded him. 
 
 Several years ago Judge Ben Lindsey of Den- 
 ver asked Colonel Roosevelt to send his son Quen- 
 tin out West. A few months before his death 
 the Colonel was talking to the Judge, and tears 
 came into his eyes as he said: "Judge, you re- 
 member what you said about that boy? Well, 
 he went west, he went west" (in France) . Then 
 he added: 
 
 "It is pretty hard. His mother, of course, like 
 all mothers, feels it, but by George — by George, 
 it's all right; and I tell you, Judge, if this war 
 lasts another year I won't have a son left. Not 
 
20 GOOD STORIES 
 
 one! I tell you, they are bears; they are bears 
 for a fight when there ought to be a fight. I am 
 proud of them." 
 
 ROOSEVELT'S KIND OF BOY 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt was fond of telling the boys 
 what their country expects of them. He was a 
 great friend and supporter of the Boy Scouts of 
 America, who wore official mourning crepe on 
 their arms for him after his death, and mourned 
 him most sincerely. Here is what he once said 
 about the American boy — and every boy should 
 paste it in his hat: 
 
 "What we have a right to expect of the Ameri- 
 can boy is that he shall turn out to be a good 
 American man. Now the chances are that he 
 won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal 
 of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weak- 
 ling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work 
 hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded 
 amFclean-lived, and able to hold his own under 
 all circumstances and against all comers. It is 
 only on these conditions that he will grow into 
 the kind of man of whom America can really be 
 proud. In life, as in a football game, the prin- 
 ciple to follow is to hit the line hard; don't foul 
 and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." 
 
 —THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 21 
 
 IDEAL FAMILY LIFE 
 
 The warmth of the affection shown within the 
 Roosevelt household was a notable part of the life 
 at the homestead, Sagamore Hill, near Oyster 
 Bay, N. Y. 
 
 When a Western visitor was at the hospital in 
 New York just before Christmas, 1918, Captain 
 Archie Roosevelt, who was wounded in France 
 and invalided home, came in to bid the Colonel 
 g-ood-by — a slight, boyish figure, with the arm 
 paralyzed by shrapnel still supported by its metal 
 brace. They talked a few minutes about a trip 
 they planned to harpoon tarpon in Southern wa- 
 ters in March, the Colonel explaining with enthus- 
 iasm that harpooning was particularly adapted 
 to such cripples because it could be done with 
 one arm. And then the Captain crossed the room 
 and kissed his father good-by. 
 
 It was the same with all the members of the 
 family. When his children saw their father after 
 a separation they would pat him on the shoulder 
 as they passed him in the room, and he would 
 detain them a moment to hold their hands. 
 
 "I must talk that over with Edith (Mrs. Roose- 
 velt) and Alice" (his daughter), was his frequent 
 reply when some personal matter was up for his 
 consideration. "They have such good judgment." 
 
22 GOOD STORIES 
 
 FAMILY ALL OUTDOOR FOLK 
 
 The whole family was devoted to outdoor life. 
 During the Colonel's terms as President, the 
 White House stables contained excellent riding 
 horses. There was a horse or pony for every 
 member of the family. There were two mounts 
 for the President, one being Rusty, a bay heavy- 
 weight hunter on which the President frequently 
 jumped fences in the country to remind him of 
 the time when he once rode to hounds on Long 
 Island. 
 
 Because of the President's example there was 
 probably more good healthful exercise taken in 
 Washington during his administration than has 
 been known there before or since. Americans 
 are not generally credited with being anemic, but 
 the official and social duties of the capital never 
 before were so crowded in between sets of tennis, 
 riding and walking expeditions. 
 
 His contests President Roosevelt held not only 
 with his boys and other members of his family, 
 but with Cabinet officers and foreign diplomats. 
 Capitals of Europe were sometimes highly enter- 
 tained by accounts of their representatives fol- 
 lowing the President, who had invited them for 
 afternoon walks, across fences, ditches, and thru 
 mud ankle deep. Pouring rain never prevented 
 the President from taking his walks with mem- 
 bers of the foreign embassies, and he was always 
 delighted with credit given him for inaugurating 
 the strenuous life in Washington. And the out- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 23 
 
 door life lived in Washington was but a repeti- 
 tion of that enjoyed at Sagamore Hill, typical 
 haven of domestic bliss and always a scene of 
 rational pleasures. Whether the Colonel was in 
 or out of office, his delightful country home was 
 always his favorite abode. 
 
 DO IT NOW 
 
 Jacob Riis tells of his going to Sagamore Hill, 
 during the Colonel's Presidency, to complain that 
 a rule had been adopted by the War Department, 
 discontinuing the custom of having the names of 
 private soldiers who were killed in the Philip- 
 pines cabled home. The reports merely dismissed 
 the matter by saying that so many unnamed 
 privates had fallen. Mr. Riis' chance to speak of 
 the matter did not come until he had luncheon. 
 Adjutant-General Corbin was present, and the 
 President at once turned to him and asked, "Gen- 
 eral, is there such a rule?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. President," he answered. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "The department adopted it, I believe, from 
 motives of economy." 
 
 "General, can you telegraph from here to the 
 Philippines ?" 
 
 General Corbin thought that if the order were 
 to be repealed, it could better be done from Wash- 
 ington. But the President said: 
 
 "No! No! We will not wait. The mothers 
 
24 GOOD STORIES 
 
 who gave the best they had to the country should 
 not be breaking their hearts, that the Govern- 
 ment may save twenty-five or fifty dollars. Save 
 the money somewhere else." 
 
 Forthwith from the table at Sagamore Hill 
 went the new ruling that the names of the pri- 
 vates as well as those of the officers falling in 
 the Philippines, should be sent home by cable. 
 
 DEFIES PARTY LEADERS 
 
 It was on April 6, 1882, that young Roosevelt 
 took the floor in the Assembly at Albany and 
 demanded that Judge Westbrook of Newburgh, 
 against whom certain charges had been made, be 
 impeached. And for sheer moral courage that 
 act is probably supreme in Roosevelt's life. He 
 must have expected failure. Even his youth and 
 idealism and ignorance of public affairs could not 
 blind him to the apparently inevitable conse- 
 quences. 
 
 That speech — the deciding act in Roosevelt's 
 career — was not remarkable for eloquence. But 
 it was remarkable for fearless candor. He called 
 thieves thieves, regardless of their millions; he 
 slashed savagely at the judge and the attorney- 
 general; he told the plain unvarnished truth as 
 his indignant eyes saw it. 
 
 When he finished, the veteran leader of the 
 Republicans rose and with gently contemptuous 
 raillery asked that the resolution to take up the 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 25 
 
 charge be voted down. He said he wished to give 
 young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wis- 
 dom of his course. 
 
 "I," said he, "have seen many reputations in 
 the State broken down by loose charges made 
 in the Legislature." 
 
 And presently the Assembly gave "young Mr. 
 Roosevelt time to think" by voting not to take 
 up his "loose charges." 
 
 Ridicule, laughter, a ripple — apparently it was 
 all over, except the consequences to the bump- 
 tious and dangerous young man which might flow 
 from the cross set against his name in the black 
 books of "the ring." 
 
 HE FIGHTS CORRUPTION AND WINS 
 
 That night the young man was once more 
 urged to be "sensible," to "have regard for his 
 future usefulness," to "cease injuring the party." 
 He snapped his teeth together and defied the 
 party leaders. The next day he again rose and 
 again lifted his puny voice and his puny hand 
 against smiling, contemptuous CoiTuption. 
 
 Day after day he persevered on the floor of the 
 Assembly, in interviews for the press; a few 
 newspapers here and there joined with him; As- 
 semblymen all over the State began to hear from 
 their constituents. Within a week his name was 
 known from Buffalo to Montauk Point, and every- 
 where the people were applauding him. 
 
26 GOOD STORIES 
 
 On the eighth day of his bold, smashing at- 
 tack the resolution to take up the charges was 
 again voted upon at his demand. And the As- 
 semblymen, with the eyes of the whole people 
 upon them, did not dare longer keep themselves 
 on record as defenders of a judge who feared to 
 demand an investigation. The opposition col- 
 lapsed. Roosevelt won by 104 to 6. 
 
 BEATS A HIRED THUG 
 
 When the gentlemen who had been accustomed 
 to run the lower house of the Legislature, no 
 matter which party was in power, found that 
 they could not control Mr. Roosevelt, that he 
 could be neither bought nor bullied, they resorted 
 to the desperate expedient of hiring a thug to 
 administer physical chastisement as a rebuke for 
 his temerity in opposing their will. The mere 
 fact showed the caliber of the men who had been 
 in almost absolute control of legislation in the 
 State — and the need of men like Roosevelt in 
 public life. 
 
 One night, in the lobby of the old Delavan 
 House in Albany, since burned, the thug and his 
 expected victim met. There the legislators were 
 accustomed to congregate every evening and 
 much of the "inside" business of the session was 
 transacted. Mr. Roosevelt started to leave the 
 hotel at 10 o'clock on the night in question, after 
 spending some time chatting with fellow-mem- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 27 
 
 bers. As he passed a door leading to the buffet, 
 a noisy group emerged, as if by signal. Among 
 them was a pugilist known as "Stubby" Collins, 
 and this fellow proceeded to jostle Mr. Roosevelt 
 with some force. Instantly the latter, who was 
 alone, realized the nature and animus of the act. 
 He paused, on guard, and "Stubby" struck at 
 him, demanding with a show of indignation what 
 he meant by running into him that way. 
 
 "Stubby's" blow did not land on the young 
 legislator. His employers had not told him that 
 Mr. Roosevelt had been one of the best boxers at 
 Harvard, and enjoyed a fight. But he had been 
 paid to "beat up" the young man and went ahead 
 to earn his fee. 
 
 With great coolness Mr. Roosevelt awaited the 
 attack which he knew was coming. He took up 
 a position where he could see, not only the thug, 
 but all the group accompanying him and in the 
 background certain others whom he suspected of 
 being the real principals. As he stood waiting, 
 "Stubby" made his rush. 
 
 The fight lasted less than a minute, for the 
 thug had more than met his match. He had the 
 surprise of his life. As his friends picked him 
 up from the floor, a badly beaten man, "Stubby" 
 gazed in astonishment at the smiling Roosevelt 
 and realized that he had much to learn about 
 boxing and "beating up." 
 
 As the thug was removed for repairs, Mr. 
 Roosevelt walked across the lobby and pleasantly 
 informed the astounded promoters of the affair 
 
28 GOOD STORIES 
 
 that he understood their connection with it and 
 was greatly obliged to them. He said he had not 
 enjoyed anything so much for a year. 
 
 Respect for his personality was thenceforth 
 among the mingled feelings with which he was 
 regarded by the inner circles of legislation at 
 Albany, and his influence grew apace. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF HIS RANCH LIFE 
 
 A characteristic incident showing Roosevelt's 
 readiness to throw down the moral gauntlet oc- 
 curred at Medora, North Dakota, at a meeting 
 of cattle men. The county had three prisoners 
 who were the last of a gang of outlaws, and it 
 was shown that a deputy sheriff, who was in his 
 "unofficial moments" a cow thief, was in alliance 
 with them. The ranchmen hesitated to denounce 
 the sheriff when he strolled in to take part in the 
 meeting of protest. He was a "two-gun" man 
 with a nasty temper and "wore a brace of the 
 most restless six shooters in the Kildeer region 
 of the Bad Lands." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt v/as the one who explained to 
 the sheriff in no uncertain terms the evil of cow 
 stealing. The disappearance of the next cow, he 
 said, might become the signal for declaring the 
 corrupt official's office vacant, and it was not 
 without the pale of possibility that certain of 
 Roosevelt's friends, whom he might be unable to 
 restrain, might invoke the assistance of a rope or 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 29 
 
 a Winchester in preventing their herds from de- 
 predations. 
 
 Contrary to expectations, the sheriff drew 
 neither of the guns projecting from his belt; gave 
 no resentful sign. His look at Roosevelt was on© 
 of startled understanding of an unpleasant deter- 
 mination. But that was all — and the ranchmen 
 of the Kildeer mountain region came to have a 
 serene feeling as they turned into their blankets 
 at night that their cows would not diminish in 
 number before morning. 
 
 From that time on Roosevelt's position in the 
 West was one of distinction among men. His 
 real business was raising cattle and caring for 
 them on the plains, and if anything could have 
 raised him in their estimation more than his de- 
 termination to be a real "cattle man" as distinct 
 from a "sheep man" it was the display of nerve, 
 which he never lacked. 
 
 CAPTURED BOAT THIEVES 
 
 Once on returning from his ranch, says James 
 Morgan in "Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the 
 Man," he found that some horse thieves, in mak- 
 ing their escape, had taken his boat. They felt 
 sure that this would make them safe from pur- 
 suit because there was no other boat. Bill Sew- 
 all, however, built a rude craft in great haste, 
 and on this he and Mr. Roosevelt and another 
 man started down the Little Missouri. They 
 
30 GOOD STORIES 
 
 floated probably for one hundred and fifty miles 
 before they saw the camp of the fugitives. 
 
 Mr, Roosevelt, unseen, stole ashore and upon 
 the camp. When near enough he cried, with his 
 weapon pointed, "Hands up, or I will shoot!" The 
 only man about the place was asleep, so it 
 chanced, and, thus rudely awakened, he was in 
 great alarm. He rolled over and over on the 
 ground in his anxiety not to be shot. He proved 
 to be no more than a poor tool of the robbers 
 and could hardly make himself understood in 
 English. The thieves, two in number, made their 
 appearance towards dark. They were in the 
 stolen boat. Mr. Roosevelt and one of his men 
 crept down by the river, where they sprang from 
 their hiding as the outlaws drew near, and covered 
 them with their guns. There was nothing for 
 the men in the boat to do but to throw up their 
 hands and surrender. 
 
 Nearly a week was required to take the cap- 
 tives to the county seat, a distance of two hun- 
 dred miles. The boats stuck in the ice-jams and 
 were almost upset. Each night a fire was built 
 on the river bank and the two culprits were com- 
 pelled to lie on opposite sides of it, while Mr. 
 Roosevelt sat on watch until midnight and the 
 rest of the night was divided between his two 
 assistants. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 31 
 
 LIVED THE HARDIEST OF LIVES 
 
 During his two years in the West as a ranch- 
 man Mr. Roosevelt lived the life of the hardiest 
 plainsman. On round-ups he endured all the 
 hardships of his men. He spent much of his 
 time hunting, and killed specimens of all the 
 game to be found on the plains and in the moun- 
 tains. He was particularly fond of bear hunting, 
 which requires a nerve as steady and an aim as 
 sure as the pursuit of any game in the United 
 States. 
 
 But Roosevelt was never a "dead shot." He 
 always talked and wrote in a most dispassionate 
 way about his "misses." He was called by guides 
 a "mighty good game shot," his success being 
 due to enacting faithfully his own description of 
 the hunter which he wrote for his "Hunting 
 Trips of a Ranchman" : 
 
 "He [the hunter] must be persevering, watch- 
 ful, hardy, and with good judgment; and a little 
 dash and energy at the proper time often help 
 immensely. I myself am not and never will be 
 more than an ordinary shot ; for my eyes are bad 
 and my hand not over steady; yet I have killed 
 every kind of game to be found on the plains." 
 
 HUNTED BIG GAME 
 
 Even earlier than his ranching experiences — 
 in 1883 — Mr. Roosevelt had attracted notice as 
 
32 GOOD STORIES 
 
 a hunter of big game in the Rockies and else- 
 where. Characteristically enough, small game 
 had no attraction for him, and it is doubtful 
 whether he ever shot a rabbit. Only when the 
 beast had some chance against the hunter did 
 sport appeal to him, and, naturally enough, the 
 game that seemed most to his taste was the 
 grizzly bear of the Rockies, that incarnation of 
 strength, fury, and cunning. 
 
 When Mr. Roosevelt arrived in the Rocky 
 Mountain country and announced his intention 
 of tracking the grizzly bear, the toughs of the 
 region declared their intention of "doing him up." 
 He was a tenderfoot. One of them went so far 
 as to send a message to Roosevelt to the effect 
 that if he proceeded to track the grizzlies there 
 would be shooting. Upon receipt of the message 
 Roosevelt inquired where this person with the 
 propensity for shooting lived, and rode at once 
 into his camp. The man, however, had forgotten 
 why he wanted to shoot. 
 
 That incident put an end to any inclination to 
 treat Roosevelt as a tenderfoot, and before the 
 hunting campaign was ended he had won the re- 
 spect of all those rough men of the West, and 
 when the time came many of those who had 
 been ready to "do him up" as a tenderfoot were 
 the most eager to follow him into the jungles of 
 Cuba. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 33 
 
 KILLS HIS FIRST BUFFALO 
 
 The first guide of Mr. Roosevelt in a buffalo 
 hunt, Ferris by name, has told us about it. On 
 a September day in 1883 the future President 
 arrived at a lonely railroad station, with the buf- 
 falo ranges fifty miles away over a badly broken 
 country. The guide describes Roosevelt as a 
 "thin young man, plainly dressed." 
 
 "It meant hard work to get a buffalo at that 
 time," says Ferris, "and whether the thin young 
 man could stand the trip was a question, but 
 Roosevelt was on horseback and he rode better 
 than I did, and could stand just as much knock- 
 ing about as I could. 
 
 "In the first night out, when we were twenty- 
 five or thirty miles from a settlement, we went 
 into camp on the open prairie, with our saddle 
 blankets over us, our horses picketed, and the 
 picket ropes tied about the horns of our saddles, 
 which we used for pillows. In the middle of the 
 night there was a rush, our pillows were swept 
 from under our heads and our horses went tear- 
 ing off over the prairie, frightened by wolves. 
 
 "Roosevelt was up and off in a minute after 
 the horses. 
 
 "On the fourth or fifth day out, I think it was, 
 our horses pricked up their ears, and I told Roose- 
 velt there was a buffalo close at hand. We dis- 
 mounted and advanced to a big 'washout' near, 
 peered over its edge, and there stood a huge 
 
S4 GOOD STORIES 
 
 bufTalo bull, calmly feeding and unaware of our 
 presence. 
 
 " 'Hit him where that patch of red shows on his 
 side,' said I, 'and you've got him.' 
 
 "Roosevelt was cool as a cucumber, took a care- 
 ful aim, and fired. Cut came the buffalo from 
 the washout, with blood pouring from his mouth 
 and nose. 'You've ^n^t him,' I shouted, and so 
 it proved, for the bulfalo plunged a few steps and 
 fell." 
 
 AT HOME EVERYWHERE 
 
 For days at a time, when he was a young 
 ranchman, he would roam the wilds alone with 
 his pony, and his pocket editions of the classics, 
 and the simplest and scantiest provisions. He 
 has slept on the prairie in his buffalo bag when 
 the thermometer had fallen to sixty-five degrees 
 below zero. One night when he was out, a bliz- 
 zard overtook him, and obliged him to seek shel- 
 ter. Coming upon a cowboy, who was also fieeing 
 from the storm, the two found a deserted hut, in 
 which they took refuge. As they sat about the 
 fire they had built, Mr. Roosevelt read "Hamlet" 
 to his companion, who was an uncultivated son 
 of the plains, but who was deeply interested in 
 the tale. At the end of the reading he gave it 
 as his enthusiastic opinion that "old Shakespeare 
 savveyed human nature some." Mr. Roosevelt 
 learned to take life everywhere as he found it. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 35 
 
 He could wash his clothes, and cook his meals, 
 and in his Wild West days he went into frontier 
 society. He attended the balls, and danced with 
 the women, and opened one cowboy ball with the 
 wife of a small stockman, dancing the lancers 
 with her, opposite her husband, who not long 
 before had killed a notorious bad man in self- 
 defence. 
 
 ALONE WITH A GRIZZLY 
 
 From his boyhood wanderings in the groves 
 of Long Island and in the woods of Maine to his 
 last hunting expedition in the Rocky Mountains, 
 Mr. Roosevelt's steady purpose was to build up 
 his body and to train his mind, to gain the self- 
 reliance of the primitive man. How well and 
 how early he succeeded in this ambition was 
 shown by an experience of many years ago. He 
 was hunting with an old mountain guide in a 
 strange and remote part of Idaho. The guide 
 was so rheumatic and crabbed that he v/as a 
 most trying companion. Finally, when he got to 
 drinking to excess, the young man would put up 
 with him no longer. 
 
 Roosevelt took his horse, his sleeping-bag, a 
 frying-pan, some salt, flour, and baking-powder, 
 a chunk of salt pork, his washing-kit, a hatchet 
 and his wardrobe, which consisted of a few pairs 
 of socks and some handkerchiefs, and boldly 
 struck out for himself. He had now only his 
 
36 GOOD STORIES 
 
 compass for a guide through a regfion unknown 
 to him. There was virtually no trail. When 
 night came he would throw down his sleoping'-bag 
 on a mat of pine needles beside a crystal brook, 
 drag up a few dry logs, and then go olf with 
 his rifle to get a bird for his supper. Once, while 
 on this long and lonely journey homeward, he en- 
 countered in the fading light of day a big grizzly 
 bear. In the combat that followed, the savage 
 beast charged straight at him, roaring furiously, 
 as it crashed and bounded through the bushes, 
 its mighty paw barely missing him. The in- 
 trepid rifleman won the battle, and the next 
 morning after his regular plunge in the icy wa- 
 ters of a mountain torrent, he laboriously re- 
 moved the beautiful coat of his fallen foe, there- 
 after a cherished trophy at Oyster Bay. 
 
 BREAKING PRECEDENTS 
 
 While President Roosevelt knew how to pre- 
 sen'e the dignity of his station, he refused to 
 be lx)und by every social tradition which has 
 grown up around the Presidency. He believed 
 that the President of the United States need be 
 no more and no less than a gentleman in order 
 to receive all the respect that is due him. "It is 
 my endeavor," he said to a caller early in his 
 administration, "to make the White House during 
 my term not a second-rate palace, like that of 
 some insignificant prince, but the home of a self- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 37 
 
 respecting American citizen who has been called 
 for a time to serve his countrymen in executive 
 office." 
 
 Feeling- that his own breeding was good 
 enough, he refused to put on Presidential man- 
 ners. For instance, there was an old rule under 
 which he would take precedence of his wife. He 
 rejected it at once, refusing to go through a door 
 before any woman. Again, Washington was 
 shocked one morning, not long after Mr. Roose- 
 velt took office, to hear that the President had 
 walked over to Senator Hanna's to breakfast. A 
 President was supposed never to enter the door 
 of any one outside the circle of his official family, 
 the members of the Cabinet. Mr. Roosevelt, how- 
 ever, would not be a prisoner in the White House. 
 One day he even dropped in at the British Em- 
 bassy and called on Lord Pauncefote. That was 
 almost treasonable in the eyes of the tradition 
 worshippers, for the Embassy was really foreign 
 soil. N'Bvertheless they survived to see him sail 
 away from the shores of the United States and 
 pay a visit to the President of Panama. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT AND THE PAINTERS 
 
 A story is told of the President joining some 
 house painters, who were at work at the White 
 House. 
 
 "How much do you get a day?" he asked one 
 of them. 
 
38 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "Three dollars and a quarter." 
 
 "That's mighty good pay for such pleasant 
 work." 
 
 Taking a brush, he rapidly covered ten square 
 feet and then said: — 
 
 "I used to think I should like to be a painter. 
 It always appealed to me because you can see 
 something accomplished with each stroke of the 
 brush." 
 
 SQUARE DEAL FOR THE JEWS 
 
 One lesson in the "square deal" was taught 
 by Mr, Roosevelt, while President of the New 
 York Police Commission, when a notorious for- 
 eign agitator came to New York. This person, 
 who was widely known as a "Jew baiter," or as 
 one who went about stirring up hatred and 
 strife against the Jewish race, was to open a 
 campaign in the United States. His first speech 
 was to be delivered in New York, and his friends 
 came to Mr. Roosevelt with an appeal for police 
 protection. "He shall have all the police protec- 
 tion he wants," the Commissioner assured the 
 delegation. 
 
 Then he sent for a pohce inspector and said: 
 "Select thirty good, trusty, intelligent Jewish 
 members of the force, men whose faces most 
 clearly show their race, and order them to report 
 to me in a body." When the thirty chosen rep- 
 resentatives of the chosen people stood before 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 39 
 
 him a broad smile of satisfaction spread over his 
 face, for he had never seen a more Hebraic as- 
 semblage in his life. 
 
 "Now," he said to these policemen, "I am go- 
 ing to assign you men to the most honorable 
 service you have ever done, the protection of an 
 enemy, and the defence of religious liberty and 
 free speech in the chief city of the United States. 
 You all know who and what Dr. Ahlwart is. I 
 am going to put you in charge of the hall where 
 he lectures and hold you responsible for perfect 
 order throughout the evening. I have no more 
 sympathy with Jew baiting than you have. But 
 this is a country where your people are free to 
 think and speak as they choose in religious mat- 
 ters, as long as they do not interfere with the 
 peace and comfort of their neighbors, and Dr. 
 Ahlwart is entitled to the same privilege. It 
 should be your pride to see that he is protected 
 in it; that will be the finest way of showing your 
 appreciation of the liberty you yourselves enjoy 
 under the American flag." The thirty saluted 
 and marched silently off on their novel duty. 
 
 When the Jew baiters came to the hall, looking 
 for a mob of Jews, they could hardly believe their 
 eyes, for they saw the place guarded at every 
 approach and the interior lined by those uni- 
 formed Jewish protectors. The agitator and his 
 followers walked between rows of stern, solemn 
 Jewish policemen, standing mute and stiff as 
 statues. The Jews, moreover, who came bent on 
 disturbing the meeting, were restrained by the 
 
40 GOOD STORIES 
 
 mere presence of their brethren, who stood before 
 them charged with the duty of keeping the peace. 
 When one did let his angry passion rise above 
 control, a Jewish policeman quietly reached for 
 him and firmly threw him out of the hall. The 
 meeting failed utterly from lack of opposition, 
 and the great national movement against the 
 Jews was ruined, at the outset, by Mr. Roose- 
 velt's illustration of the virtues of Jewish citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 FORMING THE ROUGH RIDERS 
 
 Before he thought of raising a regiment of his 
 own, Mr. Roosevelt tried other ways of going to 
 the war with Spain. At first he wished to be 
 appointed on General Fitzhugh Lee's staff, but 
 finally preferred a place in the line. He turned 
 to New York, in the hope that he might be made 
 one of the field officers of the 71st Regiment 
 from that state. The Governor, however, was 
 embarrassed with many applications. 
 
 At last, he adopted the plan of recruiting a 
 regiment among the men of his old Wild West, 
 and Secretary Alger ofl:ered to make him the 
 colonel of such a command. Roosevelt's only 
 military experience, however, had been gained in 
 a four years' service with the New York militia, 
 in which he had risen to a captaincy. He wisely 
 reflected that, while he was learning his new du- 
 ties, the army would go off to Cuba, and leave 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 41 
 
 him and his regiment behind on the training 
 field. He therefore asked the Secretary of War 
 to appoint him heutenant-colonel and make Leon- 
 ard Wood the colonel. Wood was a surgeon in 
 the regular army and had been the physician in 
 attendance on President McKinley. Although 
 war was not his business, he had led a body of 
 troops against the Apache Indians in an emer- 
 gency and won a medal of honor. In the course 
 of his service he had picked up a sound general 
 knowledge of army methods. 
 
 Roosevelt and Wood had never met until the 
 former came to Washington as Assistant Secre- 
 tary of the Navy. They had then been immedi- 
 ately attracted to each other, and soon became 
 fast friends. The surgeon had been fired with 
 an ambition to lead a relief expedition to the 
 Alaskan mining region on the Klondike the win- 
 ter before, and had urged Roosevelt to join him. 
 They were now equally eager to serve in the war, 
 and Wood had tried in vain for an appointment 
 from his own state, Massachusetts. He wel- 
 comed the chance to join his friend in raising 
 the Western regiment, and, with high ardor, they 
 entered upon their duties. 
 
 The plan of a Western regiment set the plains- 
 men and the mountaineers aflame with excite- 
 ment. They telegraphed offers of their services, 
 singly and in hastily formed bands. People be- 
 gan to speak of the picturesque organization as 
 "The Rough Riders," a term borrowed from the 
 circus. The idea seized upon the imagination 
 
42 GOOD STORIES 
 
 of adventurous Eastern youth. From the South, 
 and indeed from all directions, applications flowed 
 in a torrent. 
 
 No one caught the contagion of the Roosevelt 
 spirit more quickly than the college athlete of 
 the East. Young men of education and fortune 
 pressed more earnestly for a chance to serve in 
 the ranks under Roosevelt, than to gain commis- 
 sions from the President as oflicers of other com- 
 mands. While he had to decline applications by 
 the thousands, Mr. Roosevelt determined to ac- 
 cept a sufficient number of picked men, of ath- 
 letic tastes, from the older states to form a troop. 
 
 A most remarkable lot of private soldiers they 
 proved to be, when they came to Washington to 
 be mustered in. There were among them grad- 
 uates of all the famous colleges, members of the 
 most fashionable clubs of New York and Boston, 
 and troopers from the fancy mounted militia of 
 the big cities. There were the celebrated tennis 
 champion and the next best player; a captain of 
 a Harvard crew and one of his men; two foot- 
 ball players from Princeton; two noted track 
 athletes from Yale; two polo players from Mr. 
 Roosevelt's old team at Oyster Bay; a celebrated 
 steeplechase rider from New York; a captain of 
 a Columbia crew, and there were New York po- 
 licemen, anxious to serve again under their old 
 Commissioner. 
 
 As this unusual troop was about to be mus- 
 tered in, Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt addressed 
 a few remarks to them in this vein: ^'Gentle- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 43 
 
 men: You have now reached the last point. If 
 any one of you doesn't mean business, let him 
 say so now. An hour from now it will be too 
 late to back out. Once you are in, you've got to 
 see it through. You've got to perform, without 
 flinching, whatever duty is assigned to you, re- 
 gardless of the difficulty or the danger attending 
 it. You must know how to ride, you must know 
 how to shoot, you must know how to live in the 
 open. Absolute obedience to every command is 
 your first lesson. No matter what comes you 
 mustn't squeal. Think it over, all of you. If 
 any man wants to withdraw, he will be gladly 
 excused, for there are thousands who are anxious 
 to have places in this regiment." 
 It is needless to say that no one backed out. 
 
 NICKNAMES IN THE RANKS 
 
 In his book, "The Rough Riders," Colonel 
 Roosevelt has given us an intimate glimpse of 
 some of the characters in the regiment, as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "The men generally gave one another nick- 
 names, largely conferred in a spirit of derision, 
 their basis lying in contrast. A brave but fas- 
 tidious member of an Eastern club, who was 
 serving in the ranks, was christened 'Tough Ike' ; 
 and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter- 
 tent, and who was a decidedly rough cow- 
 puncher, gradually acquired the name of 'The 
 
44 GOOD STORIES 
 
 Dude.' One unlucky and simple-minded range- 
 rider, who had never been east of the great 
 plains in his life, unwarily boasted that he had 
 an aunt in New York, and ever afterward he 
 went by the name of 'Metropolitan Bill.' A huge 
 red-headed Irishman was named 'Sheeny Solo- 
 mon.' A young Jew who developed into one of 
 the best fighters in the regiment accepted with 
 entire equanimity the name of Tork-chop.' We 
 had quite a number of professional gamblers 
 who, I am bound to say, usually made good sol- 
 diers. One who was almost abnormally quiet and 
 gentle was called 'Hell-roarer'; while another 
 who, in point of language and deportment, was 
 his exact antithesis, was known as 'Prayerful 
 James.* " 
 
 LAST WORDS TO THE ROUGH RIDERS 
 
 When the Rough Riders were mustered out on 
 September 15, 1898, Colonel Roosevelt gave them 
 some famous words of advice similar to those he 
 frequently gave in later months to the entire 
 country. It was a direct, personal, and force- 
 fully typical speech, credited with much potency 
 in the lives of some of the men to whom it was 
 made. In substance it was as follows: 
 
 "Get action; do things; be sane; don't fritter 
 away your time; create; act; take a place wher- 
 ever you are and be somebody; get action — and 
 don't get gay." 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 45 
 
 SENATOR CULLOM'S LITTLE JOKE 
 
 Many are the stories told of Colonel Roosevelt 
 and his relation to the members of that famous 
 regiment in after life. Senator Shelby M. Cul- 
 lom of Illinois once discovered the loyalty of the 
 Colonel to his field comrades when he was Presi- 
 dent. The Senator had called at the White House 
 and was told that the President was engaged. 
 
 "Who's there?" he asked of the doorkeeper. 
 
 "Somebody who says he was in the Rough 
 Riders," was the reply. 
 
 "Well," observed the legislator, as he turned 
 away, "what chance have I, then? I'm only a 
 Senator." 
 
 THE LOVER OF NATURE 
 
 John Burroughs, the great naturalist, declared 
 that he did not know a man with a keener and 
 more comprehensive interest in Nature and wild 
 life, an interest both scientific and human. Speak- 
 ing of President Roosevelt's trip to the Yellow- 
 stone Park in April, 1903, Burroughs said he was 
 struck with the extent of his natural history 
 knowledge and his trained powers of observation. 
 On that occasion the naturalist was able to help 
 the President identify only one bird. All the 
 others the President recognized as quickly as 
 Burroughs himself. 
 
 It was while the President's party was in the 
 Yellowstone that he remarked: 
 
46 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "I heard a Bullock's oriole a little while ago." 
 
 "You may have heard one," was the polite ob- 
 jection of a man familiar with the country, "but 
 I doubt it. Those birds won't come for two 
 weeks yet." 
 
 "I caught two bird notes which could not be 
 those of any bird except an oriole," the President 
 insisted. 
 
 "You may have the song twisted," observed a 
 friend. 
 
 As the members of the party were seated at 
 supper in the cabin that evening Mr. Roosevelt 
 suddenly laid down his knife and fork, exclaim- 
 ing, "Look! Look!" 
 
 On a shrub before the window was a Bullock's 
 oriole. Nothing that happened on the whole trip 
 seemed to please the President so much as that 
 verification of his bird knowledge. 
 
 After a visit to the President at Sagamore Hill 
 in 1907, John Burroughs wrote that the one pas- 
 sion of Roosevelt's life seemed to be natural his- 
 tory, for a new warbler that had appeared in the 
 woods "seemed an event that threw the affairs 
 of state and the Presidential succession into the 
 background." He told a political visitor at that 
 time that it would be impossible for him to dis- 
 cuss politics then, as he wanted to talk and hunt 
 birds, and for that purpose he took his visitors 
 with him. 
 
 "Fancy," suggests Burroughs, "a President of 
 the United States stalking rapidly across bushy 
 fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 47 
 
 the one idea of showing to his visitors the black- 
 throated green warbler!" 
 
 On this walk the party passed a large and 
 wide-spreading oak. The naturalist pointed to it 
 and observed that it was a remarkable example 
 of the noble tree. 
 
 "Yes, and you see by the branching of that 
 oak," said the President, "that when it grew up 
 this wood was an open field, and maybe under 
 the plough; it is only in fields that oaks take 
 that form." 
 
 "That is true," agreed the naturalist, "but for 
 the minute when I first observed the tree my 
 mind didn't take in that fact." 
 
 KNEW ANIMALS AND BIRDS 
 
 "Do you see anything wrong with the head of 
 that pronghorn?" asked Roosevelt as he handed 
 Burroughs a copy of his "Ranch Life and the 
 Hunting Trail." 
 
 It was a picture of a hunter bringing in an 
 animal on the saddle behind him. Burroughs 
 saw nothing wrong with the picture. The Presi- 
 dent took the naturalist into one of his rooms, 
 where the mounted head of a pronghorn hung 
 over the mantel, and pointed out that the eye 
 was "close under the root of the horn," whereas 
 the artist. Remington, had placed the eye in the 
 picture two inches too low. 
 
 iMr. Roosevelt's interest in birds and natural 
 
48 GOOD STORIES 
 
 history of course dated from his boyhood. Early 
 in his teens he published a list of the birds in 
 Franklin County, New York. He kept a bird 
 journal at the age of 14, when he was in Egypt, 
 and on that tour with his father up the Nile to 
 Luxor his success as a naturalist was foreshad- 
 owed, for he made a collection of Egyptian birds 
 found in the Nile Valley which is now in the 
 Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D. C. 
 
 When he went to Harvard, it was his ambi- 
 tion to be a naturalist, but there he became con- 
 vinced, it is said, that all the out-of-door worlds 
 of natural history had been conquered and that 
 the only worlds remaining were to be conquered 
 through the laboratory, the microscope, and the 
 scalpel. 
 
 A REALLY GREAT NATURALIST 
 
 In his natural history studies, as in all his 
 other undertakings. Colonel Roosevelt was most 
 painstaking and accurate and on more than one 
 occasion he emerged triumphant from a dispute 
 with professional naturalists over some rare 
 specimen. 
 
 Scientists generally acknowledged the Colonel 
 an authority in this field. Carl Akeley, head of 
 the elephant-hunting expedition in Africa for the 
 American Museum of Natural History, and now 
 connected with the Elephant Hall of the museum, 
 paid tribute after the Colonel's death to this 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 49 
 
 phase of his accomplishments. Mr. Akeley, while 
 hunting elephants in the African wilds, encoun- 
 tered the Roosevelt expedition there and hunted 
 with the party for some days. 
 
 "Colonel Roosevelt was an amateur naturalist, 
 and yet he was a naturalist of splendid training," 
 said Mr. Akeley. "He had the keen eye and mind 
 of the ideal naturalist and he was further aided 
 by a phenomenal memory such as few men pos- 
 sess. He found infinite joy in studying wild ani- 
 mal life in its native haunts, and the least of his 
 pleasure in killing it. His greatest pleasures lay 
 in seehig and learning, thereby proving him an 
 ideal naturalist. 
 
 "Many of his statements on the subject of his 
 explorations and discoveries were twisted and 
 ridiculed by hostile and ignorant critics. His 
 enemies made great fun of the River of Doubt, 
 the uncharted stream he traced to its source in 
 the South American wilds. But the facts remain 
 that he rendered a great sei'vice to the science 
 of geography by locating it exactly, and that the 
 Brazilian Government named it after him, *Rio 
 Teodoro.' 
 
 "Incidentally, I believe that his exposure and 
 trials on that Brazilian trip led to his death." 
 
 As a nature-lover at all times the President 
 seems to have stood the test of being able to see 
 little things as well as big things, and of seeing 
 without effort and premeditation. Yet a degree 
 of patience was required for the accumulation of 
 his knowledge in these fields. The warblers, 
 
50 GOOD STORIES 
 
 both in color and song", are bewildering to the ex- 
 perienced ornithologist. Nevertheless, John Bur- 
 roughs says, the President had mastered every 
 one of them. 
 
 He wrote Burroughs one day that he had just 
 come in from walking with Mrs. Roosevelt about 
 the White House grounds looking up the arriving 
 warblers. 
 
 "Most of the warblers," he said, "were up in 
 the tops of the trees, and I could not get a 
 glimpse of them, but there was one with chest- 
 nut cheeks, with bright yellow behind the cheeks, 
 and a yellow breast thickly streaked with black, 
 which has puzzled me. I saw the black burrian, 
 the summer yellow bird, and the black-throated 
 green." 
 
 But he did not let his yellow-breasted visitor 
 go away without learning his name. A few days 
 later he wrote: "I have identified the warbler. 
 It is the Cape May." 
 
 HIS LOVE OF SONG BIRDS 
 
 The ordinary hunter or ranchman would hardly 
 interrupt his story of cattle and game to write 
 such a passage as this about song birds, as Mr. 
 Roosevelt did in one of his hunting books: 
 
 "The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher or- 
 der (than the plain skylark), deserving to rank 
 with the best. Its song has length, variety, 
 power, and rich melody; and there is in it some- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 51 
 
 times a cadence of wild sadness inexpressibly 
 touching. Yet I cannot say that either song 
 would appeal to others as it appeals to me, for 
 to me it comes forever laden with a hundred 
 memories and associations ; with the sight of dim 
 hills reddening in the dawn, with the breath of 
 the cold morning winds blowing across lonely 
 plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlight 
 prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all 
 the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I 
 doubt if any man can judge dispassionately of 
 the bird songs of his own country ; he cannot dis- 
 associate them from the sights and sounds of the 
 land that is so dear to him." 
 
 TALE OF A SHREW 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt's eyes v»'ere continually alert for 
 the unusual when on hunting excursions. Once 
 while in the Selkirks after caribou, with a hunter 
 and an Indian guide, he amused himself while 
 resting after lunch by getting a specimen of rare 
 animal life for a friend. He says : 
 
 "I was sitting on a great stone by the edge of 
 the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which had 
 come up from a short flight — I can call it noth- 
 ing else — underneath the water, and was singing 
 sweetly from a spray-splashed log. Suddenly a 
 small animal swam across the little pool at my 
 feet. It was less in size than a mouse, and as 
 it paddled rapidly underneath the water its body 
 
52 GOOD STORIES 
 
 seemed flattened like a disk and was spangled 
 with tiny bubbles like specks of silver. It was 
 a water-shrew, a rare little beast. I sat motion- 
 less and watched both the shrew and the water- 
 wren — water-ousel, as it should rightly be named. 
 The latter, emboldened by my quiet, presently 
 flew by me to a little rapids close at hand, light- 
 ing on a round stone and then slipping uncon- 
 cernedly into the swift water. Anon he emerged, 
 stood on another stone, and trilled a few bars, 
 though it was late in the season for singing, and 
 then dived into the stream again. * * * In 
 a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. 
 It got into a little shallow eddy and caught a 
 minute fish, which it carried to a half-sunken 
 stone and greedily devoured, tugging voraciously 
 at it as it held it down with its paws. Then its 
 evil genius drove it into a small puddle along- 
 side the brook, where I instantly pounced on it 
 and slew it, for I knew a friend in the Smithson- 
 ian at Washington who would have coveted it 
 greatly." 
 
 FONDNESS FOR FISTICUFFS 
 
 A characteristic anecdote of Colonel Roosevelt's 
 fondness for fisticuffs was related after his death 
 by Mr. Robert J. Mooney, formerly associate 
 publisher of the Chicago Inter Ocean. The scene 
 was the President's office in the White House 
 during the presidential campaign of 1904. Mr. 
 Mooney said: 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 53 
 
 "I was in Washington August 18, 1904, being 
 then on the editorial staff of the New York 
 Tribune. A boyhood chum of mine — I do not 
 care to mention his name, as he is still in the 
 Government service — met me and asked if I knew 
 the President and could get him an interview. 
 
 "I replied I knew William Loeb, the President's 
 secretary, and would do my best. I called up 
 Mr. Loeb, who told me to bring my friend to the 
 White House. We went. There was a line of 
 more than 100 people waiting. I sent my card 
 in to Mi\ Loeb, who came out in a few minutes 
 and beckoned us to come in. 
 
 "In his private office the President hurried to 
 greet us and said to my friend — who was ama- 
 teur boxing and wrestling champion of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia: 
 
 " 'You are the finest looking man in boxing togs 
 I ever saw. Now tell me — how did you knock out 
 Blank that night I saw you at the club?' 
 
 " 'Why, Mr. President, it was a punch like 
 this,' he replied. He illustrated it in the air. 
 
 " 'Show it to me ! Show it to me ! Hit me on 
 the chin as you hit him.' 
 
 "My friend did it, but softly. 
 
 " 'No, no ; that won't do. Hit me hard. Hit 
 me the way you hit him.' 
 
 "My friend did it. He gave the President an 
 awful punch in the jaw. 
 
 " 'That's it, that's it. I've got it now,' ex- 
 claimed the President delightedly. 'Now let me 
 try it on you.' 
 
54 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "He did. He hit my friend and sent him reel- 
 ing. 
 
 *' 'I've sure got it,' the Colonel said. 'I'm going 
 to try it tomorrow on Lodge and Garfield. Won't 
 they squirm?' And the President laughed like a 
 boy. 
 
 "I said to him: *Mr. President, you've got the 
 strongest back I ever saw.' 
 
 " 'Yes, it is quite strong,' he replied, immensely 
 pleased. 
 
 "Then I told him our errand. 
 
 " 'Yes, I know all about you,' he said to my 
 friend. 'No man in the service is more entitled 
 to promotion than you. You shall have it to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 "We had been there an hour, talking and 
 scuffling. I was scared for fear some secret serv- 
 ice man might see us from the window. 
 
 **I learned afterward that among the waiting 
 crowd were a member of the firm of J. P. Morgan 
 & Co.; General Boynton, one of the managers of 
 the Associated Press, and several politicians of 
 national fame, who wished to see the President 
 about his campaign." 
 
 ROOSEVELT AS A HUNTER 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt's fame as a hunter of big 
 game is well founded. It was characteristic of 
 him that he always obeyed his guides, and did 
 his full part in every expedition. By the unani- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 55 
 
 mous assertion of every man who ever went on 
 a hunting trip that involved camp life for a con- 
 siderable length of time, there is nothing like 
 participation in such an expedition for bringing 
 out and making clear the fundamental realities 
 of character. It reveals both virtues and vices, 
 strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes them 
 all. Not only are many of the restrictions and 
 inhibitions created and enforced in ordinary com- 
 munity intercourse suddenly removed or weak- 
 ened, but new demands are made for the endur- 
 ance of inconveniences and the performance of 
 hard and distasteful work. 
 
 For these reasons it is important to know 
 what the celebrated hunter of big game in 
 Africa, R. J. Cuninghame, says about Colonel 
 Roosevelt as a companion on a hunting trip 
 that was as long, as hard, and dangerous as a 
 hunting trip could well be. 
 
 Mr. Cuninghame is a man not at all likely to 
 give undeserved praise, and when he declares 
 that the Colonel, on his famous African trip, 
 met with extraordinary success all the require- 
 ments of an ideal associate in the wilds, he 
 speaks with high authority and his verdict is 
 decisive. It is to be noted, too, that among the 
 virtues ascribed to the man so often accused of 
 rash impulsiveness, of indocility to discipline, 
 and disregard for the judgment of others, was 
 that of scrupulous, cheerful, prompt obedience 
 to the orders given and regulations laid down by 
 the leader of the expedition. He submitted even 
 
56 GOOD STORIES 
 
 when he did not understand, and though he 
 sometimes questioned, it was after, not before, 
 he obeyed. Hardships did not discourage him, 
 troubles did not make him lose his temper, and 
 dangers attracted him instead of dismaying him. 
 This was the spirit of the true sportsman. 
 
 Mr, Cuninghame makes it quite clear that 
 there survived in the Colonel most strongly the 
 joy in the chase and its triumphant ending that 
 in the innumerable generations of the past was 
 the hunter's reward for the labor on which, 
 more than on any other, depended the welfare 
 of the tribe. 
 
 He told the following story of "one very near 
 squeak" the Colonel had. Said he: 
 
 "The Colonel was determined to get an ele- 
 phant, and a tusker at that. I told him what 
 that meant, and how much risk there was, but 
 he said he was willing to face it. That was the 
 Colonel all over. Tell him the risks and he 
 would size them up quietly. If he decided they 
 were worth while, that was all there was to it. 
 He just went ahead and took them without 
 saying another word. 
 
 "Well, we found an elephant in a forest on 
 Genia Mountain. We had been hunting for three 
 days, and it was really hard work for a man 
 of the Colonel's bulk in that heat and at that 
 altitude, 11,000 feet. At last I caught sight 
 through a thick bush of elephant hide and a 
 tusk, about thirty-five feet away, just enough to 
 tell me it was a fine specimen. I pointed it out 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 57 
 
 to the Colonel, and he fired with complete cool- 
 ness and got the elephant in the ear and dropped 
 him. 
 
 "As the shot went off the forest all around 
 roared with trumpetings. We were in the midst 
 of a herd of cows and young bulls, and one of 
 the latter thrust his head through the bushes 
 right over the Colonel's head. I was right be- 
 hind him and fired at once and bowled it over. 
 Then I rushed up to the Colonel and said: *Are 
 you all right, sir?' But I could see he was before 
 I spoke. He hadn't turned a hair. At any 
 moment the cows might have blundered through 
 the bush over us, but he never thought of that. 
 He went up to the old chap he had killed and 
 gave it the coup-de-grace and then let himself 
 loose. I never saw a man so boyishly jubilant." 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt danced and shouted with 
 glee after shooting his first "tusker." But he 
 was not a game butcher, and, though his killing 
 usually lacked as excuse the primordial need 
 for food, it was as far as possible from being 
 an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter. 
 
 For a long time after Roosevelt's return from 
 Africa he was often referred to throughout the 
 world as "Bwana Tumbo." That was the name 
 given to him by the natives of Africa, and 
 meant "Big Chief." 
 
 NO SECTARIAN PREJUDICES 
 
 In Rome occurred one of the most sensational 
 
58 GOOD STORIES 
 
 incidents of Mr. Roosevelt's career, and there 
 have been few which so well illustrate his char- 
 acter. An audience had been arranged for him 
 with the Pope. Some time before the Pope had 
 refused to see former Vice-President Fairbanks 
 because that gentleman had made an address to 
 the Methodists in Rome. 
 
 A message was conveyed to Colonel Roosevelt 
 through the American Ambassador in the fol- 
 lowing terms: 
 
 "The Holy Father will be delighted to grant 
 audience to Mr. Roosevelt on April 5 and hopes 
 nothing will arise to prevent, such as the much- 
 regretted incident which made the reception of 
 Mr. Fairbanks impossible." 
 
 The Colonel immediately sent the following 
 to Ambassador Leishman: 
 
 "It would be a real pleasure to me to be pre- 
 sented to the Holy Father, for whom I entertain 
 a high respect, both personally and as the head 
 of a great Church. I fully recognize his entire 
 right to receive or not to receive whomsoever he 
 chooses, for any reason that seems good to him, 
 and if he does not receive me I shall not for one 
 moment question the propriety of his action. 
 
 "On the other hand, I, in my turn, must de- 
 cline to make any conditions which in any v/ay 
 limit my freedom. I trust on April 5 he will find 
 it convenient to receive me." 
 
 The answer was conveyed through the Ambas- 
 sador that "the audience could not take place 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 59 
 
 except on the understanding expressed in the 
 former message." 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt instantly replied: "Proposed 
 presentation is, of course, now impossible." 
 
 The Methodists of Rome undertook to make 
 capital out of the incident and issued a statement 
 attacking the Pope. Colonel Roosevelt immedi- 
 ately rebuked them by cancelling an appointment 
 he had made to meet them at a reception at 
 Mr. Leishman's home. He wanted it made clear 
 that he had no sectarian prejudices and had 
 stood simply on his rights as an American 
 citizen. 
 
 TRUE AMERICAN FARMER 
 
 President Roosevelt reserved one room for 
 himself in the White House. It was formerly 
 the Cabinet room, and here he was most at home, 
 suiTounded with a large variety of character- 
 istic keepsakes — a belt of cartridges, a sword, 
 a Russian revolver which Admiral Togo sent 
 him, the candlestick used in sealing the treaty 
 of peace between Japan and Russia at Ports- 
 mouth, and many original drawings of cartoons 
 relating to himself. One of these represented a 
 keen-eyed American farmer, gray-haired and 
 shaggy-bearded, with his stocking feet on a 
 footrest before a fire, and a lamp at his elbow, 
 by the light of which he was reading the Presi- 
 dent's message. 
 
60 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "That's the old boy I am working for in the 
 White House," President Roosevelt enthusias- 
 tically explained to a caller whose attention had 
 been attracted to the cartoon. "The future of 
 this nation rests with him. He will never ask 
 to have the laws set aside. He will never use 
 dynamite as an argument. He is a true 
 American." 
 
 MET MEN WHO DO THINGS 
 
 During his Presidency Mr. Roosevelt was 
 democratic in his relations with not only men 
 who had ideas to give him, but with men who 
 were of service to him in living the strenuous 
 life. "Professor" Mike Donovan at the White 
 House boxed with him, and a jiu-jitsu artist 
 taught the President the secrets of that science. 
 
 In explaining why he had "as a practical man 
 of high ideals, who had always endeavored to 
 put his ideals in practice," conferred with Mr. 
 Harriman, the railroad magnate, and Mr. Arch- 
 bold of the Standard Oil Company, the former 
 President made these assertions: 
 
 "I have always acted and shall always act 
 upon the theory that if, while in public office, 
 there is any man from whom I think I can gain 
 anything of value to the Government, I will 
 send for him and talk it over with him, no 
 matter how widely I differ from him on other 
 points. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 61 
 
 "I actually sent for, while I was President, 
 trust magnates, labor leaders, Socialists, John L. 
 Sullivan, 'Battling' Nelson, Dr. Lyman Abbott. 
 I could go on indefinitely with a list of people 
 whom at various times I have seen or sent for. 
 And if I am elected President again I shall con- 
 tinue exactly the same course of conduct, without 
 the deviation of a hair's breadth. And if ever 
 I lind that my virtue is so frail that it won't 
 stand being brought into contact with either 
 trust magnates or a Socialist or a labor leader, 
 I will get out of public life." 
 
 FACING A MOB 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt was always happy where 
 things were happening. He said once that he 
 liked to be where something was going on, and 
 he generally managed to make something happen 
 where he was. Danger aroused in him a keen 
 sense of enjoyment, as was illustrated in a small 
 way in Victor, Colorado, during the campaign of 
 1900. The opposition in Colorado to the Re- 
 publican position on the coinage issue was bitter, 
 and a mob tried to prevent him from speaking in 
 Victor. One man hit him in the breast with a 
 piece of scantling six feet long from which an 
 insulting banner had been torn. Another man 
 tried to strike him in the face, but was prevented 
 by a miner. One observer said afterward: 
 
 "When the storm of the mob swept up to him 
 
62 GOOD STORIES 
 
 I stood on the lower step of the Pullman sleeper 
 with George W. Ogden. Ogden exclaimed:. 
 
 "'See the Colonel's face!' 
 
 "I looked. Rocks were flying over him and 
 the scantling' waved savagely. And he ? He was 
 smihng and his eyes were dancing; and he was 
 as composed as though he were approaching the 
 entrance to his own home among friends." 
 
 When it was all over he exclaimed enthusias- 
 tically : 
 
 "This is magnificent. Why, it's the best time 
 I've had since I started. I wouldn't have missed 
 it for anything." 
 
 He seemed to enjoy everything in the same 
 enthusiastic way, and he had "a bully time" 
 throughout the campaign, which resulted in the 
 triumphant election of McKinley and Roosevelt. 
 
 SCANDALIZED THE SENATORS 
 
 President Roosevelt probably was the only 
 occupant of the White House who ever had 
 boxing matches within its sacred precincts. Mike 
 Donovan used to go there frequently to meet the 
 President. Mr. Roosevelt also used to fence with 
 his old commander, General Leonard Wood, and 
 once nearly disabled the General, it is said. He 
 also staged a motion-picture play in the White 
 House, showing his old Oklahoma friend, Jack 
 Abernathy, killing wolves with his bare hands. 
 Jack was among those present, and so were 
 General Wood and several Ambassadors. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 63 
 
 It gave great scandal to many reverend 
 Senators to see the way in which such successors 
 of Leatherstocking as Abernathy and Bill Sewall 
 went to the White House and got the President's 
 ear for hours at a time. Before Senator Hoar 
 had come to know Mr. Roosevelt as he after- 
 wards did, he went to the White House to 
 remonstrate with him for appointing Ben Daniels 
 marshal of Arizona. Mr. Hoar was one of the 
 most dignified and sedate men in the Senate. 
 
 "Mr. President," said Mr. Hoar in horrified 
 accents, "do you know anything about the char- 
 acter of this man Daniels you have appointed to 
 be marshal of Arizona?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I think so," said Mr. Roosevelt; 
 "he was a member of my regiment." 
 
 "Do you know," said Mr. Hoar, impressively, 
 "that he has killed three men?" 
 
 The President was scandahzed. "You don't 
 mean it," he said. 
 
 "It is a fact," said Mr. Hoar. 
 
 The President was thoroughly indignant. He 
 pounded his fist on the table. "When I get hold 
 of Daniels," he said, "I will read him the riot 
 act. He told me he'd only killed two." 
 
 CALLING A SPADE A SPADE 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt had a vigorous vocabulary and 
 was never backward about using it in a fight. 
 He branded so many men as liars that a news- 
 
64 GOOD STORIES 
 
 paper humorist coined the name "Ananias Club" 
 and used it to include most of those who had 
 incurred Mr. Roosevelt's enmity. The name 
 stuck and the laugh lasted, but it did not deter 
 Mr. Roosevelt from continuing to call people 
 liars, in plain language, when the occasion and 
 the circumstances seemed to justify him in 
 doing so. 
 
 BLINDED BY A BLOW 
 
 In all his athletic training and contests Mr. 
 Roosevelt asked no favors of an opponent. He 
 liked to give and take the hardest blows in 
 boxing, as in politics, and no opponent was ex- 
 pected to "go easy" with him, when he was in 
 the White House or at any other time. Nothing 
 illustrates this rule better than an episode which 
 the Colonel himself made public, only after the 
 lapse of twelve years. In October, 1917, in the 
 course of an interview with newspaper men, he 
 told this story in explanation of his relinquish- 
 ing the practice of boxing: 
 
 "When I was President I used to box with 
 one of my aides, a young captain in the artillery. 
 One day he cross-countered me and broke a 
 blood vessel in my left eye. I don't know 
 whether this is known, but I never have been 
 able to see out of that eye since. I thought, as 
 only one good eye was left me, I would not box 
 any longer." 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 65 
 
 This story was too promising for the news- 
 paper men to let drop without endeavoring to 
 have it amplified by the soldier who delivered 
 the blow. 
 
 A few days later, in the New York Times, 
 appeared this interview with Colonel Dan T. 
 Moore, of the United States Army: 
 
 CAMP MEADE, Md., Oct. 27, 1917.— Colonel 
 Dan T. Moore, of the 310th Field Artillery Regi- 
 ment, 79th Division, National Army, admits ht 
 struck the blow that destroyed the sight ol 
 Colonel Roosevelt's eye. He said: 
 
 "I am sorry I struck the blow. I'm sorry the 
 Colonel told about it, and I'm sorry my identitjfe- 
 has been so quickly uncovered. I give you my 
 w^ord I never knew I had blinded the Colonel 
 in one eye until I read his statement in the paper 
 a few days ago. I instantly knew, however, that 
 I was the man referred to, because there was 
 no other answering the description he gave who 
 could have done it. I shall write the Colonel a 
 letter expressing my regrets at the serious re- 
 sults of the blow. 
 
 *T was a military aide at the White House in 
 1905. The boxers in the White House gym 
 were the President, Kermit Roosevelt, and my- 
 self. The President went farther afield for his 
 opponents in other sports, but when he wanted 
 to don the boxing gloves he chose Kermit or 
 myself." 
 
 "Tell about the blow that blinded the Presi- 
 dent." 
 
66 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "I might as well try to tell about the shell that 
 killed any particular soldier in this war. When 
 you put on gloves with President Roosevelt it 
 was a case of fight all the way, and no man in 
 the ring with him had a chance to keep track of 
 particular blows. A good fast referee might 
 have known, but nobody else. The Colonel 
 wanted plenty of action, and he usually got it. 
 He had no use for a quitter or one who gave 
 ground, and nobody but a man willing to fight 
 all the time and all the way had a chance with 
 him. That's my only excuse for the fact that 
 I seriously injured him. There was no chance 
 to be careful of the blows. He simply wouldn't 
 have stood for it." 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt, when informed of Colonel 
 Moore's statement, said : "There is nothing more 
 to say about the matter." 
 
 There was Roosevelt the Man all over. What 
 other man, in public or in private life, would 
 have suffered such an injury in silence, and 
 concealed it from even his intimate friends, for 
 a period of twelve years? 
 
 SHOT BY A MANIAC 
 
 On October 14, 1912, when the Presidential 
 campaign was at its height, Colonel Roosevelt 
 had arrived in Milwaukee when he was shot by 
 John Schrank, a New Yorker who was found to 
 be a maniac. The Colonel was just seating him- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 67 
 
 self in an automobile for the drive to the hall 
 where he was to deliver an important address 
 when Schrank sent the bullet into his chest at 
 short range. 
 
 On the instant there was a movement to deal 
 summarily with Schrank, but Colonel Roosevelt 
 was cool, and himself restrained the crowd until 
 Schrank was taken properly into custody. 
 
 The bullet, having passed through the candi- 
 date's heavy overcoat and his other clothing, 
 pages of manuscript and his spectacle case, had 
 penetrated only two inches into the right breast. 
 He was able to proceed to the Auditorium, and 
 against the advice of friends and physicians 
 made a speech lasting fifty-three minutes. 
 
 This feat, which drew the applause of the 
 world and caused all Americans, irrespective of 
 their political beliefs, to glory in such an indom- 
 itable will and such fortitude, seemed to produce 
 no ill effects. The candidate went to his home 
 in Oyster Bay within a fortnight after being 
 taken to a hospital in Chicago, and there con- 
 tinued his campaign by statements and messages 
 to his followers through prominent Progressive 
 political leaders. 
 
 HOW HE FELT AFTER BEING SHOT 
 
 Here is a part of the speech Colonel Roosevelt 
 made in Milwaukee just after the bullet of 
 erratic John Schrank had lodged in his chest. 
 
68 GOOD STORIES 
 
 It was declaratory in that dramatic moment of 
 his joy in life and leadership: 
 
 "I do not care a rap about being shot, not a 
 rap. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot 
 make a very long speech. But I will try my 
 best. First of all, I want to say this about my- 
 self: I have altogether too many important 
 things to think of to pay any heed or feel any 
 concern over my own death. Now I would not 
 speak to you insincerely within five minutes of 
 being shot. I am telling you the literal truth 
 when I say that my concern is for many other 
 things. 
 
 "I want you to understand that I am ahead 
 of the game anyway. No man has had a happier 
 life than I have had, a happy life in every way. 
 I have been able to do certain things that I 
 greatly wished to do, and I am interested in 
 doing other things." 
 
 PROVED CLEANNESS OF LIFE 
 
 While the campaign was in progress stories 
 were spread widely by word of mouth that 
 Colonel Roosevelt was a drunkard. He deter- 
 mined that, as soon as this slander appeared in 
 any responsible newspaper, he would settle it 
 for all time by a libel suit. Similar stories, he 
 said, were circulated to this day about other 
 public men equally guiltless and now dead, be- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 69 
 
 cause they never deemed them worthy of contra- 
 diction in their lifetime. 
 
 Presently the charge appeared in a newspaper 
 called Iron Ore, published in Ishpeming, Mich., 
 and Colonel Roosevelt promptly sued for libel. 
 The suit was tried in May, 1913, and the array 
 of witnesses that the plaintiff produced never 
 was equaled in any suit in recent times. Ad- 
 mirals, generals, cabinet officers, senators, gov- 
 ernors, authors, newspaper men, and, in fact, all 
 the men who had been intimately associated with 
 the Colonel, appeared to give their testimony, 
 and they testified not only to his temperance in 
 drinking, but to his cleanness of life and speech. 
 It was a tribute to be proud of, and the testi- 
 mony completely exonerated him from the loose 
 and unfounded charge. 
 
 NEEDED A PUNCH 
 
 "Better faithful than famous," used to be one 
 of his characteristic sayings, wrote Jacob Riis 
 in his life of the former President. "It has been 
 his rule all his life. A classmate of Roosevelt 
 told me recently of being present at a Harvard 
 reunion where a professor told of asking a 
 graduate what would be his work in life. 
 
 " '0,' said he, 'really, you know, nothing seems 
 to me much worth while.' Roosevelt got up and 
 said to the professor: 
 
 " That fellow ought to have been knocked 
 
70 GOOD STORIES 
 
 on the head. I would take my chances with a 
 blackmailing policeman sooner than with him.'" 
 
 HE WAS NOT THERE 
 
 An old story about Mr. Roosevelt dates from 
 his term as president of the old New York City 
 Board of Police Commissioners, in 1896. Com- 
 missioner Roosevelt had been giving a little 
 dinner to postoffice officials from Washington 
 whom he had known there while United States 
 Civil Service Commissioner. 
 
 "I gave it," he told a newspaper man, "because 
 of their hearty co-operation with me in civil 
 service reform." 
 
 "Was Fourth Assistant Robert Maxwell 
 there?" — Maxwell being one official who noto- 
 riously hadn't "co-operated" to any alarming 
 extent. 
 
 "No, no," came back with the Roosevelt snap, 
 "and you mustn't be such a v/ag, either!" 
 
 SUPERLATIVELY BRAVE 
 
 The great courage of Mr. Roosevelt and his 
 lack of fear were shown after he was shot in 
 Milwaukee on October 14, 1912. When he had 
 recovered from his wound he was told that he 
 was foolhardy to make a speech after he had 
 been shot. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 71 
 
 "Why," said Roosevelt in reply, "you know I 
 didn't think I had been mortally wounded. If I 
 had been mortally wounded I would have bled 
 from the lungs. When I got into the motor I 
 coughed hard three times and put my hand up 
 to my mouth; as I did not find any blood I 
 thought I was not seriously hurt and went on 
 with my speech." 
 
 It is remembered that when his physician on 
 this occasion urged him to return to the hotel 
 and not go to the Auditorium to speak, the 
 Colonel replied, "I will deliver this speech or die, 
 one or the other." 
 
 When he completed this memorable address 
 his shoes were filled with blood that had rushed 
 from his gaping chest wound. The Colonel dis- 
 played heroic courage of the highest type. 
 
 HIS FRIEND UNDERSTOOD 
 
 To show the live sympathy that all who had 
 been associated with him had expected, a story 
 is told that an old comrade in arms approached 
 him and said: "Mr. President, I have been in 
 jail a year for killing a gentleman." 
 
 "How did you do it?" asked the President, 
 inquiring for the circumstances. 
 
 "Thirty-eight on a forty-five frame," replied 
 the man, thinking that the only interest the 
 President had was that of a comrade who wanted 
 to know with what kind of a tool the trick was 
 
72 GOOD STORIES 
 
 done. His reference to this joke, in a telegram 
 to a Western friend immediately after he was 
 shot in Milwaukee, mystified so many people, 
 who took it for anything from delirium to a 
 private wire code, that he had to explain it. 
 
 "Probably a .38 on a .45 frame," he had tele- 
 graphed. 
 
 T. R.*S CURIOSITY SATISFIED 
 
 President Roosevelt took a dignitary out with 
 him for a stroll one afternoon, and in the course 
 of the walk sighted a steep and rocky knoll, 
 toward which he directed his course. He turned 
 to his companion and observed as they began 
 making the ascent: "We must get up to the 
 top here," and after much panting and laboring 
 the feat was accomplished. 
 
 "And now, Mr. President," asked the official, 
 "may I ask v/hy we are up here?" 
 
 "Why, I came up here," returned Roosevelt, 
 laughing, "to see if you could make it." 
 
 HAVE YOU EVER READ IT? 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt was a tireless reader of books, 
 and on his long railroad trips usually carried half 
 a dozen volumes. But the side pocket of his 
 traveling coat always held one stoutly bound, 
 well-thumbed book — a copy of "Plutarch's Lives." 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 73 
 
 On campaign tours and pleasure jaunts he took 
 a daily half-hour dose of Plutarch. 
 
 "I've read this little volume close to a thou- 
 sand times," he said one day, "but it is ever 
 new." 
 
 A GREAT MAN'S CREED 
 
 "Mr. Roosevelt's creed?" wrote Jacob Riis, his 
 close friend for many years in police work in 
 New York. "Find it in a speech he made to the 
 Bible Society. *If we read the Book aright/ he 
 said, *we read a book that teaches us to go 
 forth and do the work of the Lord in the world 
 as we find it; to try to make things better in the 
 world, even if only a little better, because we 
 have lived in it. That kind of v/ork can be done 
 only by a man who is neither a weakling nor a 
 coward; by a man who, in the fullest sense of 
 the word, is a true Christian, like Greatheart, 
 Bunyan's hero.' " 
 
 "JUSTICE, MERCY, HUMILITY" 
 
 A message from Theodore Roosevelt was 
 inserted in the Bibles given in 1917-18 to the 
 American fighting men by the New York Bible 
 Society. This message read: 
 
 "The teachings of the New Testament are 
 foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more 
 
74 GOOD STORIES 
 
 doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
 God?' 
 
 "Do justice; and therefore fight valiantly 
 against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for 
 these nations in this crisis stand for the reign 
 of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth. 
 
 "Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the 
 wounded ; treat every woman as if she were your 
 sister; care for the little children, and be tender 
 with the old and helpless. 
 
 "Walk humbly ; you will do so if you study the 
 life and teachings of the Saviour." 
 
 THE COLONEL'S FORTITUDE 
 
 "Colonel Roosevelt's life," said Judge Ben 
 Lindsey at a memorial meeting in Chicago, "was 
 marked always by a fortitude which nothing 
 could frighten. During the free silver campaign 
 he went to Cripple Creek, the very center of the 
 silver movement, to fight for the gold standard. 
 
 "His visit began by the citizens pelting him 
 with stones. It ended by Theodore Roosevelt 
 winning the population over. The same thing 
 occurred in Denver." 
 
 THAT BOY WILL NOT FORGET 
 
 During a visit to Palo Alto, Cal., Colonel 
 Roosevelt, standing on the platform of his rail- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 75 
 
 way car, singled out a wide-eyed boy just at the 
 edge of the platform and made of him a hero in 
 Boyville by leaning down and saying to him in 
 a series of explosive sentences: 
 
 "Young man, be game, but be decent. If you 
 are game, but not decent, it would be better to 
 hunt you out of society." 
 
 The little fellow said, "Yes, sir!" and edged 
 away to the outer rim of the crowd to think it 
 over. 
 
 HE ALWAYS DID 
 
 "Anyway, I've had a corking time!" Theodore 
 Roosevelt said back in the '80s when beaten at 
 the polls for Mayor of New York. "I've had a 
 corking time," he repeated in March, 1909, turn- 
 ing over the Presidency to William Howard Taft. 
 And on January 6, 1919, in the dawn, though no 
 one mortal heard, would it not have been like 
 him, glancing back at the broad roofs on Saga- 
 more Hill, ere he hurried on to seek out Quentin 
 in the shining ranks of the young men "gone 
 west," to have said, yet once more, that he had 
 had a corking time? He always did. 
 
 THE WIDOW'S MIGHT 
 
 On one of President Roosevelt's Southern trips 
 his train stopped at Charlotte, N. C. A com- 
 
76 GOOD STORIES 
 
 mittee of women, led by Mrs. Thomas J. Jackson, 
 widow of General Stonewall Jackson, was at the 
 depot to greet him. When he was introduced he 
 referred to himself as by right a Southerner, and 
 then, being introduced to Mrs. Jackson, he added 
 a remark which simply flashed through the 
 South. 
 
 "What? The widow of great Stonewall Jack- 
 son? Why, it is worth the whole trip down here 
 to have a chance to shake your hand," and he 
 reminded her that he had -appointed her grand- 
 son to a cadetship at West Point. 
 
 NOW HE WAS SAFE 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt once told this story at a Cabinet 
 meeting in Washington: As President, on a 
 Western trip, an old Rough Rider of his boarded 
 the train and renewed their acquaintance. Later 
 the President received a letter from the cowboy 
 asking for $150 to help defend himself against a 
 charge of stealing horses. The Colonel sent the 
 money. A month later he received a letter from 
 the cowboy thanking him for the money, but 
 saying that he no longer needed it, as his polit- 
 ical party "had elected their candidate for dis- 
 trict attorney." 
 
 WHY OUR NAVY MAKES HITS 
 
 At the beginning of Mr. Roosevelt's first ad- 
 ministration as President he insisted on frequent 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 77 
 
 target practice for the navy. He requested and 
 received one very large appropriation for ammu- 
 nition, and Congress expressed amazement when 
 he demanded almost immediately more money. 
 Asked what had happened to the first fund, he 
 said: 
 
 "Every cent has been spent for powder and 
 shot, and every bit of powder and shot has been 
 fired." 
 
 When he was asked what he intended doing 
 with the additional sum, he said: 
 
 "I shall use every dollar of that, too, within 
 the next thirty days in practice shooting. That's 
 what ammunition is made for — to bum." 
 
 Soon after that Mr. Roosevelt, as President, 
 prescribed that officers of the army, navy, and 
 marine corps should ride ninety miles in three 
 days as an endurance test. He rode ninety-eight 
 miles himself in a driving storm of rain, snow, 
 and sleet in one day. He left the White House 
 at 3:40 a. m., rode to Warrenton, Va., and got 
 back to the White House at 8:30 p. m. 
 
 KE'D HAVE DONE IT, TOO 
 
 James Bliss Townsend, who was born in 
 Oyster Bay and had been a friend of Roosevelt 
 from boyhood, told at a dinner after his death 
 that he went to Colonel Roosevelt in 1916 and 
 asked him what he would have done in the 
 Lusitania case. 
 
78 GOOD STORIES 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt, according to Mr. Townsend, 
 said that hindsight, of course, was easier to 
 show than foresight, but that if he had been 
 President he would have sent for Ambassador von 
 Bernstorff immediately after the advertisements 
 warning passengers not to travel on the Lusi- 
 tania were printed in the newspapers. He said 
 he would have asked if the advertisements were 
 official, and if he had been told they were he 
 would have given the German Ambassador and 
 all of his staff two hours to get out and would 
 have forced them to take passage on the Lusi- 
 tania on what turned out to be her last voyage. 
 Colonel Roosevelt added: 
 
 "I am sure the Lusitania would not have been 
 sunk had I been the President then." 
 
 DOCTOR RELATES ANCEDOTES 
 
 A year as physician at the White House en- 
 ables Captain George A. Lung, Medical Corps, 
 U. S. N., commanding the New York Naval Hos- 
 pital, Brooklyn, to recount many anecdotes of 
 Colonel Roosevelt. Dr. Lung was detailed to the 
 White House in August, 1902, and remained with 
 the President a year. 
 
 "President Roosevelt was always a good 
 patient," said Captain Lung. "He obeyed orders, 
 though sometimes impatient about being kept 
 in bed. He used to say: *If I live long enough 
 I will get well.' 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 79 
 
 "On our trips he used to thrust his head out 
 of the car windows to wave at folk at railroad 
 stations. We cautioned him against the danger 
 of being shot or bombed, and he would reply, 
 'Better put me in a conning tower.' 
 
 "In New Hampshire we were going up a steep 
 hill. The Colonel got out and said he would hike 
 it. I followed suit. The others remained in the 
 carriage. He started up the hill at breakneck 
 speed. I had on light patent leather shoes. For 
 three hours we plodded on at a high pace. I 
 panted and gasped. My collar wilted. I per- 
 spired. It was a pace of four miles an hour. 
 
 "At the end the Colonel was all in. So was 
 I. But the President exclaimed, 'Great, bully 1' 
 I said, 'This exercise ought to be made a test 
 for promotion.' The Colonel thumped his hands 
 together and shouted, 'By George, I'll do it!* 
 And I have an idea that is what inspired his 
 order that army officers go through severe phys- 
 ical tests." 
 
 CAUSE FOR ANGER 
 
 Captain Lung was with him when the Colonel's 
 carriage was run into by a trolley outside Pitts- 
 field, Mass., September 3, 1902, and a secret 
 service man in the carriage was killed. 
 
 "The car was filled with people," said the 
 Captain, "who were on their way to the country 
 club to give the President a farewell cheer as 
 he left the town. The President was thrown out 
 
80 GOOD STORIES 
 
 and landed on his knees. I helped him to rise 
 and gently squeezed his chest to see if any ribs 
 were broken. He resented the action and asked 
 to be left alone. 
 
 "Then he walked over to the motorman who 
 had run him down and told him that if the 
 collision was an accident it was excusable, but 
 that if it were due to carelessness it was 
 damnable. That was the only time I ever heard 
 him utter a profane word." 
 
 KAISER'S CONCEIT 
 
 When the American fleet went to Kiel the 
 Kaiser visited the flagship Louisiana and saw the 
 President's photograph hanging in a conspicuous 
 place and, upon leaving, he grandly presented a 
 photograph of himself and said that if he had 
 any preference as to where it should be hung 
 he would select the spot President Roosevelt's 
 picture adorned. The substitution, it is hardly 
 necessary to state, was not made. Colonel 
 Roosevelt used to tell that story with a great 
 deal of relish and laughed heartily at the idea 
 of the Kaiser wanting to take his place. 
 
 POLITICS MUST WAIT 
 
 President Roosevelt always was a familiar 
 figure at Harvard-Yale football games and at the 
 boat races in New London. He especially was 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 81 
 
 fond of football and watched the sport closely. 
 Just how closely can be seen by the following 
 incident: 
 
 On December 4, 1905, the committee to notify 
 President Roosevelt that the House was organ- 
 ized and ready for business, including Represen- 
 tatives McCleary of Minnesota, Littauer of New 
 York, and Williams of Mississippi, called Sec- 
 retary Loeb to ask when the President could 
 see them. It then was approaching 3 o'clock. 
 
 "The President cannot see you between 3 and 
 6 o'clock," Mr. Loeb telephoned after a consulta- 
 tion with Colonel Roosevelt. 
 
 "Why not?" asked the committee. 
 
 "He is busy," said Loeb, and hung up the 
 telephone. 
 
 The President was busy talking football with 
 Walter Camp and Jack Owsley of Yale, Bill Reid 
 and Dr. D. H. Nicholas of Harvard, Arthur T. 
 Hillebrand and John B. Fine of Princeton. The 
 previous football season had resulted in many 
 more accidents than usual, and the President 
 was of the opinion that for the good of the 
 game the rules should be revised. It was for 
 that purpose he had called Mr. Camp and his 
 associates to Washington. 
 
 SECONDARY CONSIDERATION 
 
 Half a dozen Senators and Representatives 
 were in the waiting room at the President's 
 
82 GOOD STORIES 
 
 office one morning. None of them could get in 
 to see the President, however. Finally a Senator 
 said to Captain Loeffler: "Go in and see what's 
 holding us up." 
 
 Loeffler came back and reported: "The Pres- 
 ident is giving a reception to the Harvard base- 
 ball team." 
 
 "Well," said another Senator, "tell him there 
 are a lot of Senators and Representatives here." 
 Loeffler went back and returned. 
 
 "What did he say?" chorused the waiting 
 statesmen. 
 
 "He said he knew it," replied Loeffler, "but 
 he told me that Senators and Representatives 
 must be taught their places when a Harvard 
 delegation is about." 
 
 NOT WHERE HE AIMED 
 
 Here is a story that Colonel Roosevelt told in 
 the White House after Old Bill Sewall, his Maine 
 guide, had called on him. They were on a moose 
 hunt and were camped out in the woods. 
 
 One morning while Roosevelt was trying to 
 keep warm and Bill was chopping wood a moose 
 walked into the clearing. The President grabbed 
 his rifle and fired. 
 
 The moose ran a short distance and then fell. 
 Bill laid down his ax and dashed over to the 
 moose. 
 
 "You've got him!" he yelled after a short 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 83 
 
 inspection. "How did it happen?" 
 
 "Why, I aimed for his breast," the President 
 said. 
 
 "First class!" shouted Bill. "First class! You 
 done well. You hit him in the eye." 
 
 THIS PLACE IS NOW PRESERVED 
 
 The very house where the Colonel was bom 
 used to figure in anecdotage. It was an old 
 brick front, 28 East Twentieth street, New York. 
 In 1903 a detective squad raiding gamblers' 
 places went through it. All the gambling evi- 
 dence they could find was a pile of ashes in a 
 fireplace, and a quaint gathering of sportive and 
 furtive gentry busily playing checkers. But on 
 a mantelpiece they discovered a hand-painted 
 card, with the truthful legend: "President 
 Roosevelt Was Born in This House." 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN ZEAL 
 
 This story has been vouched for by members 
 of the Colonel's family: On the east side of 
 Madison Square, when he used to play there as 
 a little shaver, stood a Presbyterian church, and 
 the sexton one day noticed the little 'un timidly 
 peeping in. But he wouldn't come in for a look 
 around ; nothing could induce him. "I know what 
 you've got in there," he explained, And later he 
 
84 GOOD STORIES 
 
 confided to his mother that what the sexton had 
 in there which was terrible was "the zeal," prob- 
 ably something like a dragon or an alligator. 
 This reduced itself to his memory of Psalm Ixix, 
 9; "For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
 up." 
 
 JIM COULDN'T STAND IT 
 
 The Colonel liked to draw his illustrations 
 from familiar and homely scenes. "Every now 
 and then," he once said, "I have to remind my- 
 self that there are a lot of Jim Jimpsons in the 
 world. I employ two men at Sagamore Hill. Jim 
 has always been second man. On several occa- 
 sions I tried to promote him to first place. But 
 he could never hold the job. It was beyond his 
 capacity. He was born at Oyster Bay and has 
 never been to New York. Once he got as far as 
 Mineola, but the magnificence of that metropolis 
 overwhelmed him and he hurried back to Oyster 
 Bay." 
 
 THE PERSONAL APPEAL 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt liked to pick out someone in 
 his audience and talk straight to one person 
 when making a speech in public. This often em- 
 barrassed the person selected. Formerly he 
 always began with, "Ladies and gentlemen, and 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 85 
 
 you" filling in the name of the particular 
 
 body he was addressing. Of late years, however, 
 "My fellow citizens" was his favorite introduc- 
 tion. 
 
 ANOTHER ROUGH RIDER YARN 
 
 Roosevelt's fondness for his Rough Riders was 
 proverbial. Many stories are told of his custom 
 of neglecting others for them. Thus Senator 
 Bard of California took a constituent to see 
 Roosevelt when he was President. The friend 
 had served in the Rough Riders. 
 
 "Mr. President," began Bard, "I want to pre- 
 sent my friend" 
 
 "Why, hello, Jim!" the President broke in. 
 "How are you?" 
 
 And for ten minutes the President and Jim 
 talked while Bard stood neglected. As the two 
 were leaving, Roosevelt said : "By the way, Jim, 
 come up to dinner tonight and bring Bard with 
 you," 
 
 HE HAD A HEART 
 
 Jacob A. Riis wrote of Colonel Roosevelt once: 
 "His love for children, especially for those who 
 have not so good a time as some others, is as 
 instinctive as his championship of all that needs 
 a lift. I doubt if he is aware of it himself. He 
 
86 GOOD STORIES 
 
 does not recognize as real sympathy what he 
 feels rather as a sense of duty. 
 
 "Yet I have seen him, when school children 
 crowded around the rear platform of the train 
 from which he was making campaign speeches 
 to shake hands, catch the eye of a poor little 
 crippled girl in a patched frock, who was making 
 frantic but hopeless efforts to reach him in the 
 outskirts of the crowd, and, pushing aside all 
 the rest, make a way for her, to the great 
 amusement of the curled darlings in the front 
 row." 
 
 AND IT IS TRUE TODAY 
 
 President Roosevelt's impatience of red tape 
 was proverbial. The story is told of one com- 
 mittee that had been meeting him daily for a 
 week in Washington, always to adjourn without 
 perceptible progress. When the committee left 
 on this occasion one of them said they would do 
 something "tomorrow." 
 
 "Tomorrow!" the President exploded. "Gen- 
 tlemen, if Noah had had to consult such a com- 
 mittee as this about building the ark, it wouldn't 
 have been built yet." 
 
 A DEBT TO BE PROUD OF 
 
 There is one New York man to whom the 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 87 
 
 Colonel owed a .small financial debt — United 
 States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy. 
 
 "Yes, the Colonel was my debtor to the extent 
 of one penny," said the Marshal, "Here's how it 
 came about: On March 3, 1909, just as Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt was to retire in favor of President 
 Taft, I was sent to Washington to present to him 
 a handsome hunting knife, the gift of Justice, 
 later Ambassador, James W. Gerard, with whose 
 court I was associated at the time. 
 
 " 'Be sure to get a coin, a penny, from the 
 President when you give him the knife,' the 
 Justice told me. 'Remember the old superstition 
 that a gift of that sort cuts friendship unless 
 a small payment is made for it.' 
 
 "When I gave Colonel Roosevelt the knife I 
 asked him for the penny. He didn't have one in 
 his pocket. Neither did his secretary, Mr. Loeb. 
 Neither did Senator Chamberlain, who was pres- 
 ent. So I volunteered: 'Here, Mr. President, 
 I'll lend you a cent.' He took it and put it in 
 his vest pocket. 
 
 "After ten minutes of conversation, during 
 which time he gave me an autographed photo- 
 graph for myself and a book for my father, who 
 always admired him, the President suddenly 
 reached into his pocket, withdrew the coin and 
 said: 'Mr. McCarthy, it gives me great pleasure 
 to hand you, in return for Judge Gerard's gift, 
 this one-cent coin.' Ever since then I have 
 prized the photograph and the book Mr. Roose- 
 velt gave me as one of the most cherished pos- 
 
88 GOOD STORIES 
 
 sessions of my father. And I always have been 
 proud of the fact that a President of the United 
 States owed me a penny." 
 
 TEDDY AS A TENDERFOOT 
 
 George William Douglas, in his book, "The 
 Many-Sided Roosevelt," tells the following story 
 of his life as a young man in the West: 
 
 "One evening after supper he was reading at 
 a table in the public room of a frontier hotel, 
 where he was passing the night. The room was 
 office, dining room, barroom, and everything else. 
 A man, half-drunk, came into the hotel with a 
 swagger, marched up to the bar, and with a 
 flourish of his arm, commanded everybody to 
 drink. Everybody was willing to obey; that is, 
 everybody but Mr. Roosevelt. He still sat at 
 the table, busy with his book. 
 
 " 'Who's that fellow ?' the man asked, pointing 
 in Roosevelt's direction. 
 
 " 'Oh, he's a tenderfoot, just arrived,' someone 
 said. 
 
 " 'Humph,' he grunted. Then he turned square 
 around and called out: 'Say, Mr. Four-eyes, I 
 asked this house to drink. Did you hear me?' 
 
 "Mr. Roosevelt made no reply. The man swag- 
 gered over to him, pulling out his pistol and 
 firing as he crossed the room. 
 
 " 'I want you to understand that when I ask 
 a man to drink with me, that man's got to drink,' 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 89 
 
 he threatened, fondling his still-smoking pistol. 
 
 " 'You must excuse me tonight. I do not care 
 for anything to drink,' said Roosevelt. 
 
 " 'That don't go here. You just order your 
 drink or there'll be more trouble.' 
 
 " 'Very well, sir,' Roosevelt replied, rising 
 slowly to his feet and waiting till he was firmly 
 poised on them before completing his remark. 'I 
 do not care for anything, but if I must' 
 
 "With the word 'must' he let his fist fly, 
 striking the bully a terrific blow on the jaw and 
 knocking him on the floor. In an instant Roose- 
 velt was astride of him, with his knees holding 
 down the man's arms. After taking away all 
 the weapons he could find, he let the man up. 
 
 " 'Now, I hope you understand, sir, that I do 
 not care to drink with you,' said the young 
 tenderfoot, who had hardened his muscle to some 
 purpose before he went West." 
 
 NOTHING LIKE PREPAREDNESS 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt himself was authority for 
 the story about the time when, riding the 
 ranges alone, reports of hostile Indians about 
 notwithstanding, he noticed three mounted 
 braves converging in his direction. As they were 
 where friendly Indians had no business to be, he 
 !lfd off his pony, set the sights of his Winchester 
 for long range and showed himself aiming care- 
 fully, but did not pull the trigger. The trio 
 
90 GOOD STORIES 
 
 talked it over and sheered off. Colonel Roosevelt 
 said it was the nearest he ever had come to 
 actual Indian fighting. 
 
 THE GENTLE REBUKE 
 
 Probably no man of his time had more pictures 
 taken of him than Colonel Roosevelt. They were 
 stacked up in every newspaper office. Many 
 stories are told of his experiences with photog- 
 raphers, and here is one: 
 
 On his trip to South America, where he dis- 
 covered the "River of Doubt," he was accom- 
 panied by several motion picture photographers. 
 One was a free lance who was a trifle sensitive 
 about his standing on board. 
 
 During the celebration of the Feast of Nep- 
 tune, when the ship crossed the equator, there 
 was a pillow fight on a rail over a tank of water 
 The photographers lined up to get the picture of 
 the struggle, with the Colonel in the background. 
 One of the regular photographers slipped a cap 
 over the free lance's camera. 
 
 One of the contestants had just been knocked 
 off the pole into the water, and Colonel Roosevelt, 
 laughing and applauding, turned to the free 
 lance, who was grinding away at his useless 
 machine, and said: 
 
 "Take off your cap, young man !" 
 
 The free lance frowned at the Colonel, think- 
 ing he was being joshed, and said: 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 91 
 
 "I am an Austro-Hungarian subject and have 
 never become an American citizen. I don't see 
 why I should." 
 
 The Colonel, continuing to smile, said: 
 
 "I was merely going to say that if you will 
 take the cap off the lens of your camera, we will 
 have the bout fought over again so you can 
 obtain a good picture." 
 
 The free lance sheepishly took off the cap 
 from the camera, and then bared his head to 
 Colonel Roosevelt. 
 
 STANDING BY A FRIEND 
 
 The Roosevelt impulse to "speak right out in 
 meeting" was indelibly impressed on the minds 
 of a number of Denver citizens a few years ago. 
 The innocent cause of the frank outburst was 
 Judge Ben Lindsey of juvenile court fame, who 
 was a friend of Colonel Roosevelt for years. 
 
 The incident was staged at one of the side 
 entrances of the Denver Auditorium, where 
 Colonel Roosevelt was scheduled to deliver an 
 address. The time was in early September, 1910. 
 The late Mayor Speer headed the committee 
 which had charge of the day's ceremonies. In- 
 asmuch as Judge Lindsey and the "powers" con- 
 trolling Denver at that time were very much at 
 outs. Judge Lindsey was not invited to serve on 
 the committee. 
 
 Desiring to at least say "How-do" to his dis- 
 
92 GOODSTORIES 
 
 tinguished friend, the judge stationed himself at 
 the side entrance which the Colonel would use 
 to reach the speaker's stand. As Colonel Roose- 
 velt stepped from the motor car preparatory to 
 entering the building he saw Judge Lindsey. 
 "Hello there, Ben; where have you been keeping 
 yourself? Come on in!" was the Roosevelt 
 greeting. 
 
 "I have not been invited," replied Judge 
 Lindsey, shaking hands. At once fire showed in 
 the Colonel's eyes and, turning to the committee, 
 he said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, haven't you made arrangements 
 for Judge Lindsey to sit on the stage with us?" 
 
 One of the party spoke up: "No, Mr. Roose- 
 velt, we did not make any arrangements for the 
 judge to be with us." 
 
 "Well," snapped the Colonel, "he is going to 
 be one of the party just the same. Come along, 
 Ben!" 
 
 Grabbing the astounded judge by the arm, 
 Colonel Roosevelt piloted him to the stage and 
 placed him in a front seat close to the speaker's 
 stand. 
 
 The committee gasped a few times, but had 
 not a word to say. 
 
 ON TOPICS OF THE DAY 
 
 The general public saw Colonel Roosevelt 
 chiefly as a first-class fighting man, stern, ener- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 93 
 
 getic, dealing and taking heavy blows. To his 
 friends, including journalists in all parts of the 
 country, he was altogether a different personal- 
 ity — "buoyant, exuberant, v/itty, full of boyish 
 enthusiasm to the very end, and human to the 
 last degree." 
 
 A visitor from the Kansas City Star, for 
 which the Colonel wrote a daily editorial, saw 
 him at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York a 
 fortnight before his death. He had been laid up 
 for several weeks with rheumatism and was 
 sitting in his dressing gown beside the bed. He 
 listened with the greatest interest to the gossip 
 that the visitor brought from Washington and 
 commented on it with keen insight. 
 
 The subject of international relations came up, 
 and he discussed other nations and leading for- 
 eign statesmen with the quaint humor that was 
 characteristic of him. 
 
 "In dealing with the Japanese," he said, "we 
 ought to do absolutely the reverse of what 
 Hearst is doing. He is constantly denouncing 
 and attacking them. We ought to treat the 
 Japanese with the utmost politeness and con- 
 sideration. When they join with us in patrolling 
 the Mediterranean or in a Red Cross drive, we 
 ought to give them the most generous recogni- 
 tion. And then we ought to send the fleet 
 around once in a while so they can look at it." 
 
 Then he added this general principle of diplo- 
 macy: "In dealing with other nations we ought 
 always to get on beautifully unless we are pre- 
 
94 GOOD STORIES 
 
 pared to protest about something and go to the 
 mat over it. We should never take the middle 
 course in wrangling over matters that we don't 
 intend to see through. That simply produces 
 irritation and gets nowhere." 
 
 Of course this was simply another way of 
 putting his famous maxim: "Speak softly and 
 carry a big stick." 
 
 NOT THE ROOSEVELT WAY 
 
 A leading Republican Senator had asked the 
 Kansas City man to deliver a message to the 
 Colonel. 
 
 "Tell him for me," the Senator said, "that I 
 think he is getting in bad with the people by 
 talking so favorably about England. His saying 
 that we ought to have a treaty for universal 
 arbitration with England, and that we don't 
 need a navy as big as England's — that sort of 
 thing doesn't sit well." 
 
 The message was duly delivered with the com- 
 ment that the visitor didn't agree with it. 
 "Nor do I," exclaimed the Colonel. "I alienated 
 the entire German vote in 1916 because I thought 
 it was necessary to speak out against Germany 
 in the war. Does anybody suppose I am going 
 to keep from saying what I think ought to be 
 said about England now, in order not to alienate 
 the anti-English vote? I don't do business that 
 way." 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 95 
 
 A SMILE AT WILSON 
 
 The talk drifted to President Wilson's latest 
 address to Congress and his insistence on ratify- 
 ing the Colombian treaty. 
 
 "It seems to me," he said, "that I merely 
 applied the famous principle of 'self-determina- 
 tion for small peoples' to the state of Panama." 
 
 NO CHANGE OF HEART 
 
 The League of Nations was mentioned, and 
 the Colonel remarked that of course he was as 
 anxious as anybody possibly could be to make 
 the peace settlement as lasting as possible. **But 
 I have had enough experience in affairs to know 
 the danger of attempting to bind the American 
 nation in a permanent alliance with the conti- 
 nent," he added. "A friend of mine has been up 
 arguing with me about it. He insisted that the 
 people of Europe had had a change of heart on 
 account of the war. 'Yes,' I said, 'about as much 
 as the people of New York would have if they 
 all got togethex in a mass meeting and adopted 
 resolutions that there should be no more vice in 
 New York City.' " 
 
 PHILADELPHIA FRIENDS 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt had a host of friends in 
 Philadelphia. His last words there were spoken 
 
96 GOOD STORIES 
 
 at the Broad Street Station on the morning of 
 January 10, 1917: 
 
 "I've had a bully time." 
 
 He used the same words in describing his 
 whole life. They might serve for his epitaph. 
 
 In 1902 the Colonel spoke at the dedication of 
 the new Central High School Building, Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 He gave the boys the famous advice which he 
 said he had heard on the football field: "Don't 
 flinch, don't foul, and hit the line hard." 
 
 A Philadelphia friend wrote him only a few 
 days before his death, reminding him of an occa- 
 sion on which he had uttered the same doctrine 
 at Harvard when he talked to a small audience 
 of undergraduates on "Playing for Harvard." 
 Those were the days when he was Police Com- 
 missioner in New York. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt's answer was dated January 
 1, 1919. In it he paid a warm tribute to "Dave" 
 Goodrich, a leading athlete, who was his right- 
 hand man in Cuba. 
 
 CHIPS OF THE OLD BLOCK 
 
 He said at Harvard, with his teeth set, as he 
 restlessly paced the platform: 
 
 "If I had a son who refused to play polo for 
 fear of breaking his neck — I'd disinherit him." 
 
 When the time came none of his sons was 
 found wanting. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 97 
 
 NO TIME LEFT IDLE 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt's passion for study and his pur- 
 pose always to improve the time was displayed 
 by his plan made soon after becoming Vice- 
 President and following his realization that he 
 would have much leisure, as the duties of the 
 office were not onerous. He asked Justice White 
 of the Supreme Court whether it would be dig- 
 nified and becoming were he to attend a course 
 of law at one of the Washington universities, to 
 prepare himself for the bar. The Justice 
 thought it would not be and suggested that he 
 should give the Vice-President some law books 
 for study and once a week "quiz" him. This 
 plan was approved by Mr. Roosevelt, but the 
 assassination of President McKinley interrupted 
 its execution. 
 
 EXPENSIVE LUXURIES 
 
 Just before the expiration of his last term Mr. 
 Roosevelt was discussing the advisability of a 
 pension for ex-Presidents. He himself didn't 
 need one, he said, because he would be able to 
 earn his living by writing. But Mr. Cleveland 
 had been m extremely straitened circumstances 
 until Mr. Ryan made him a trustee of the 
 Equitable Life at $25,000 a year. 
 
 "A President who entertains much," he said, 
 "can't save much money on $50,000 a year. The 
 
98 GOOD STORIES 
 
 last time I entertained a distinguished foreign 
 visitor with a state dinner I said to Mrs. Roose- 
 velt: 'There goes another child's schooling for 
 a year.' " 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS FOR STATESMANSHIP 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt's sense of humor is illustrated 
 in remarks he made in 1896 when speaking of 
 the Southern Populists. He said: 
 
 "Refinement and comfort they are apt to con- 
 sider quite as objectionable as immorality. That 
 a man should change his clothes in the evening, 
 that he should dine at any other hour than noon, 
 impress these good people as being symptoms of 
 depravity instead of merely trivial. A taste for 
 learning and cultivated friends, and a tendency 
 to bathe frequently, cause them the deepest sus- 
 picion. Senator Tillman's brother has been fre- 
 quently elected to Congress upon the issue that 
 he never wore either an overcoat or an under- 
 shirt." 
 
 ILLUSTRATING HIS POSITION 
 
 A few days before the inauguration of Mr. 
 Taft a party of insurgent Congressmen called 
 at the White House to get help from the Presi- 
 dent in dealing with Speaker Cannon. Already 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 99 
 
 the disposition of the former Secretary of War 
 to ignore the man who made him President was 
 noticeable. 
 
 "I'd like to help you with the new Presi- 
 dent," said Mr. Roosevelt, "but you remember 
 the skipper of the Gloucester fisherman who 
 said to his mate, 'All I want out of you, Mr. 
 Jones, is ci-vility— and damn little of that.'" 
 
 PRINCIPLE BEFORE PROFIT 
 
 On leaving the White House President Roose- 
 velt declined an offer of the presidency of a 
 large corporation at a salary of $100,000 a 
 year. He did this because he had determined 
 to make no commercial use of his name. He 
 accepted the office of associate editor of The 
 Outlook at a salary of $12,000, because he be- 
 lieved it offered him the means to reach the 
 people. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 
 
 Bishop Biermans, Vicar Apostolic of the 
 Upper Nile, said in June of 1915, just after 
 visiting Colonel Roosevelt at Oyster Bay: 
 
 "He told me he would never again be the 
 same man— that his trip to South Africa was 
 too much for him." 
 
100 GOOD STORIES 
 
 NO CHANCE TO STEAL 
 
 On June 10, 1917, the Colonel went to speak 
 for a memorial meeting of the railway brother- 
 hoods at the MetropoHtan Opera House, Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 He was as chock-a-block with vital electricity 
 as Billy Sunday at the top of his form, said one 
 of his hearers. 
 
 When he went to the Bellevue-Stratford for 
 lunch, the elevator boy in his agitation passed 
 the floor of the Blue Room. 
 
 "Don't be hard on him!" exclaimed the 
 Colonel. "He probably thinks there is some- 
 thing of value in the Blue Room that I might 
 carry off with me, but he might know I am 
 surrounded by detectives." 
 
 THE "STAR" EDITOR'S LIBRARY 
 
 A few years ago the Colonel was visiting at 
 the home of W. R. Nelson in Kansas City. 
 Looking about the library, he said to a member 
 of the family: "Where does your father keep 
 his Greek dramatists? You can always tell a 
 man of real literary instincts by his Greek 
 dramatists." Happily, the Greek dramatists 
 were in a fitting place on the book shelves. 
 
 NO "JACKET" ON HIS BOOKS 
 
 The paper cover that publishers put on books 
 is always a hotly disputed matter with readers. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 101 
 
 Those who detest it detest it. A visitor from 
 the West who saw the Colonel not long before 
 his death carried him a book on international 
 affairs. The Colonel expressed his pleasure 
 while removing the wrapper, crumpling it into 
 a wad and throwing it on the floor. 
 
 HAD SOME OF THE "VICES" 
 
 At a state dinner when he was President a 
 woman guest noticed with apparent disapproval 
 that he refused a cigar. 
 
 "Why, Mr. President," she remonstrated. 
 "Don't you smoke?" 
 
 "No, madam," he rephed, "but I like to go 
 to prize fights. Won't that do?" 
 
 SQUARE ON LABOR 
 
 John Mitchell, the great leader of the mine 
 workers, was always a welcome visitor at the 
 White House when Roosevelt was President 
 Organized labor was recognized by Roosevelt as 
 a necessity. He believed in the enforcement of 
 all labor laws and in the right of the workers 
 he said: "I am for a protective tariff that gets 
 past the mill offices down into the pockets of 
 to organize. In relation to the protective tariff 
 the workingmen." 
 
102 GOOD STORIES 
 
 ALL COMPANY WAS WELCOME 
 
 A friend who visited the Colonel at the hos- 
 pital heard of the numerous political visitors who 
 were calling on him, including standpatters as 
 well as progressives. 
 
 "My, my, Colonel," said the visitor, "what 
 company you have been keeping." 
 
 "Well," replied the Colonel with a grin, "like 
 the late Colonel Breckinridge of Kentucky, *I am 
 not a narrow man.' " 
 
 LET 'EM FIGHT IT OUT 
 
 As between two of his political antagonists 
 who had fallen out Colonel Roosevelt remarked: 
 "My position is one of malevolent neutrality." 
 
 KEEPING AT IT WINS 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt always disclaimed being a 
 genius. He said with regard to the successful 
 man: "The average man who is successful — 
 the average statesman, the average public serv- 
 ant, the average soldier, who wins what we call 
 great success — is not a genius. He is a man 
 who has merely the ordinary qualities, who has 
 developed those ordinary qualities to a more 
 than ordinary degree." 
 
 A ROOSEVELT CHARACTERISTIC 
 
 Many persons thought of Colonel Roosevelt as 
 constantly figuring on politics, and how policies 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 103 
 
 would affect him politically. The exact opposite 
 was true. Men most intimately associated with 
 him never heard him discuss his own political 
 fortunes. The only thing- he asked about a 
 policy was: "Is it right?" 
 
 AND HE HAD CALLED PENROSE NAMES 
 
 One day a strong Roosevelt Progressive met 
 Senator Penrose, king of the old standpat crowd. 
 
 "What about the candidate, Senator?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Well, how about the Colonel?" answered 
 Penrose. 
 
 "Oh, I'm for him, all right. But I didn't sup- 
 pose you would be." 
 
 "I'm for him. He's about the squarest man 
 I ever ran up against." 
 
 WHAT MADE HIM MAD 
 
 "Do you know the thing that makes me mad- 
 der than almost anything else?" the Colonel once 
 said to W. R. Nelson. "That is to see a husky 
 man going along with his wife, letting her 
 carry the baby. I know that sort of a fellow 
 is no good." 
 
 NOT ABOVE MAKING MISTAKES 
 
 A characteristic story is that of a friend who 
 took him to task for some mistake he had made 
 
104 GOOD STORIES 
 
 in one of his appointments. The former Presi- 
 dent in reply to the criticism said: "My dear 
 sir, where you know of one mistake I have 
 made, I know of ten." 
 
 WELCOMED CRITICISM 
 
 In his capacity as contributor to the Kansas 
 City Star the men on that paper say the Colonel 
 was the most considerate of men to work with. 
 He had nothing of the small man's pride in 
 what he wrote. 
 
 "If you think any of my stuff is rotten," he 
 said, "don't hesitate to throw it away. I always 
 like criticism. Secretary Root was invaluable 
 in my Cabinet because he was always ready to 
 oppose my ideas. We used to go round and 
 round, and when he didn't convince me I was 
 wrong he frequently convinced me that I would 
 have to modify my position. John Hay disagreed 
 with me. But he was too kind-hearted to say so. 
 So he didn't help me so much." 
 
 In his writings he was rarely humorous or 
 ironical. In conversation he was habitually so. 
 
 HAVING A BULLY 
 
 Former Congressman Charles G. Washburn of 
 Worcester, Mass., after remarking that Roosevelt 
 had a lively sense of humor in his college days 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 105 
 
 at Harvard, says in his book: "I remember well 
 with what glee he told us that he had gone to 
 Boston to get a basket of live lobsters for labora- 
 tory purposes, and on the way back they escaped, 
 much to the consternation of the women in the 
 horse car." 
 
 VERY LIKE A BOY 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt liked new martial or sporting 
 implements — things he could play with — as 
 keenly as any boy. In 1906 the Mikado sent 
 the President as a token of esteem a complete 
 suit of samurai armor from the thirteenth cen- 
 tury. The President excused himself to an in- 
 formal caller for a moment. Off went his. frock 
 coat and on went the armor. Presto! and he 
 made a costume parade of one up and down the 
 corridors of the White House. 
 
 PUNCH HAS ITS JOKE 
 
 While the Colonel and his son Kermit were 
 shooting in Africa, London Punch, with a genial 
 inspiration, published a cartoon of the Roose- 
 velts in the Egyptian desert carefully stalking 
 the Sphinx. The Colonel was saying, "Steady, 
 Kermit; we must have one of these!" When 
 he saw it he was so pleased with it that he 
 wrote to London and asked to have the original, 
 which was sent to him. 
 
106 GOOD STORIES 
 
 TOOK NO CHANCES 
 
 Speaking of the Rough Riders, Colonel Roose- 
 velt said: "It was necessary to get that regi- 
 ment into action, otherwise it would have been 
 laughed at. We came near being left behind, 
 and I admit that I pulled every wire in sight to 
 get that regiment to Cuba, and we got there. 
 If we had not I should never have been 
 President." 
 
 DOMESTIC FELICITY 
 
 A cowboy who had been with him in the 
 Rough Riders, sure of his sympathy, wrote him 
 from a jail in Arizona: 
 
 "Dear Colonel: — I am in trouble. I shot a 
 lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the 
 lady. I was shooting at my wife." 
 
 KNEW HIS MAN 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary of 
 the Navy, was instrumental in the selection of 
 Dewey to take charge of the Pacific squadron 
 during the Spanish-American war. San Fran- 
 cisco and a few other cities objected. They did 
 not know Dewey. 
 
 A delegation was sent to Washington to kick 
 against the appointment. The delegation was 
 finally turned over to Roosevelt. He listened 
 patiently to their objections, and said: 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 107 
 
 "Gentlemen, I cannot agree with you. We 
 have looked up his record. We have looked him 
 straight in the eyes. He is a fighter. We'll 
 not change now. Pleased to have met you. 
 Good day, gentlemen." 
 
 HONORABLE AMBITION 
 
 A few days after President McKinley had been 
 shot, when physicians had given the opinion 
 that he would recover, no one felt more joyful 
 than Vice-President Roosevelt. 
 
 "To become President through the assassin's 
 bullet means nothing to me," he said at the 
 home of Ansley Wilcox in Buffalo. "Aside from 
 the horror of having President McKinley die, 
 there is an additional horror in becoming his 
 successor in that way. The thing that appeals 
 to me is to be elected President. That is the 
 way I want the honor to come if I am ever to 
 receive it." 
 
 LOCAL LITERARY OPINION 
 
 Roosevelt was in Idaho one day when he saw 
 a copy of his book, "The Winning of the West," 
 on a newsstand. In talking to the proprietor he 
 casually asked, pointing to the book: 
 
 "Who is this man Roosevelt?" 
 
 "Oh, he is a ranch driver up in the cattle 
 country," the man replied. 
 
108 GOOD STORIES 
 
 "What do you think of his book?" 
 "Well, I've always thought I'd like to meet 
 the author and tell him if he'd stuck to running 
 ranches and not tried to write books, he'd cut 
 a heap bigger figger at his trade." 
 
 HE COULD MAKE FOLKS LAUGH 
 
 "Theodore Roosevelt is a humorist," wrote 
 Homer Davenport in the Philadelphia Public 
 Ledger in 1910. "In the multitude of his strenu- 
 ousness this, the most human of his accomplish- 
 ments, has apparently been overlooked. There 
 is a similarity between his humor and Mark 
 Twain's. If Colonel Roosevelt were on the 
 vaudeville stage he would be a competitor of 
 Harry Lauder. At Denver, at the stock grow- 
 ers' banquet during his recent Western trip, 
 Colonel Roosevelt was at his best. He made 
 three speeches that day and was eating his sixth 
 meal, yet he was in the best of fettle. You 
 couldn't pick a hallful that could sit with faces 
 straight through his story of the blue roan cow. 
 He can make a joke as fascinating as he can 
 the story of a sunset on the plains of Egypt." 
 
 THE PRESIDENT ENJOYED THIS 
 
 Professor Thayer's "Life of John Hay" con- 
 tains a good deal of delightful Rooseveltiana. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 109 
 
 Here is a letter that Mr. Hay, as Secretary of 
 State, addressed to President Roosevelt on 
 November 12, 1901: 
 
 "Count Quadt [of the German Embassy] has 
 been hovering around the State Department in 
 ever narrowing circles for three days, and at 
 last swooped upon me this afternoon, saying that 
 the Foreign Office, and even the palace, Unter 
 den Linden, was in a state of intense anxiety to 
 know how you received his Majesty's Chinese 
 medal, conferred only upon the greatest 
 sovereigns. 
 
 "As I had not been authorized by you to 
 express your emotions I had to sail by dead 
 reckoning, and, considering the vast intrinsic 
 value of the souvenir— I should say at least 30 
 cents— and its wonderful artistic merit, repre- 
 senting the German eagle eviscerating the Black 
 Dragon, and its historical accuracy, which gives 
 the world to understand that Germany was It 
 and the rest of the universe nowhere, I took the 
 responsibility of saying to Count Quadt that the 
 President could not have received the medal with 
 anything but emotions of pleasure commensurate 
 with the high appreciation he entertains for the 
 Emperor's majesty, and that a formal acknowl- 
 edgment would be made in due course. 
 
 "He asked me if he was at liberty to say 
 something like this to his government, and I 
 said he was at liberty to say whatever the spirit 
 moved him to utter." 
 
110 GOOD STORIES 
 
 GOT A CALLING DOWN 
 
 Here are other interesting passages from John 
 Hay's diary: 
 
 "Nineteen hundred and four — January 17. — The 
 President came in for an hour and talked very 
 amusingly on many matters. Among others he 
 spoke of a letter received from an old lady in 
 Canada denouncing him for having drunk a 
 toast to Helen (Hay) at her wedding two years 
 ago. The good soul had waited two years, 
 hoping that the pulpit or the press would take 
 up this enormity. 'Think/ she said, *of the 
 effect on your friends, on your children, on your 
 own immortal soul, of such a thoughtless act !' " 
 
 THE QUICK RETORT 
 
 "March 18. — At the Cabinet meeting today the 
 President said someone had written asking if he 
 wanted to annex any more islands. He answered : 
 'About as much as a gorged anaconda wants to 
 swallow a porcupine wrong end to.' He was 
 berating someone, when it was observed that the 
 man was doubtless conscientious. 'Well,' he 
 burst out, 'if a man has a conscience which leads 
 him to do things like that he should take it out 
 and look at it — for it is unhealthy.'" 
 
 STRENUOUS WORK 
 
 **April 26. — At the Cabinet meeting this 
 morning the President talked of his Japanese 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 111 
 
 wrestler, who is giving him lessons in jiu-jitsu. 
 He says the muscles of the Jap's throat are so 
 powerfully developed by training that it is im- 
 possible for any ordinary man to strangle him. 
 If the President succeeds once in a while in 
 getting the better of him he says, 'Good! 
 Lovely!'" 
 
 HE UNDERSTOOD EMERSON 
 
 "May 8. — The President was reading 'Emer- 
 son's Days,' and came to the wonderful closing 
 line, 'I, too late, under her solemn fillet saw the 
 scom.' I said, 'I fancy you do not know what 
 that means.' 'Oh, do I not? Perhaps the great- 
 est men do not, but I in my soul know I am but 
 the average man, and that only marvelous good 
 fortune has brought me where I am.' " 
 
 REAL CAUSE FOR PRIDE 
 
 "October 30. — The President came in for an 
 hour. We talked a while about the campaign 
 (1904) and at last he said, *It seems a cheap 
 sort of thing to say, and I would not say it to 
 other people, but laying aside my own personal 
 interests and hopes — for of course I desire in- 
 tensely to succeed — I have the greatest pride 
 that in this fight we are not only making it 
 on clearly avowed principles, but we have the 
 
112 GOOD STORIES 
 
 principles and the record to avow. How can I 
 help being a little proud when I contrast the 
 men and the considerations by which I am atr 
 tacked and those by which I am defended?'" 
 
 BRITISH OPINION 
 
 And Hay tells how John Morley, the British 
 statesman, had said, "The two things in America 
 which strike me as most extraordinary are 
 Niagara Falls and President Roosevelt." 
 
 "He is a superman if ever there was one," 
 said Conan Doyle at the time of his last visit 
 to the United States. 
 
 HIS INTIMATE SIDE 
 
 While Colonel Roosevelt was President he 
 talked with the greatest freedom to the news- 
 paper correspondents, always relying on their 
 discretion to put what he said in diplomatic 
 language. It was in thes^e conversations that 
 some of his famous epithets were first used. 
 
 "Senator So-and-So," he remarked, "seems to 
 have sweetbreads for brains." 
 
 Of a somewhat effeminate public man he said: 
 "Mollycoddle is too harsh a term to apply to 
 Freddie." 
 
 "Yes, So-and-So is a loyal friend," he re- 
 marked on another occasion; "there is always 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 113 
 
 in the back of his head the feeling that if we 
 were cast away on a desert island I would kill 
 and eat him." 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES 
 
 In the last few weeks before his death, the 
 question of the Presidential nominee for 1920 
 was much in the minds of Republican Congres- 
 sional leaders in Washington. The feeling was 
 general that Colonel Roosevelt had been the man 
 who had been right on preparedness and on the 
 Great War long in advance of anybody else; that 
 he had blazed the way and made the issues, and 
 that he had earned the party leadership. The 
 Colonel himself was absolutely indifferent. He 
 told his friends he would not turn his hand over 
 for the nomination. 
 
 "So far as I am concerned," he said, "my 
 position is exactly what it was in 1916. I am not 
 at all concerned whether the party nominates 
 me or not. What I am concerned in is that it 
 nominates a man and adopts principles that I 
 can support." 
 
 ROOSEVELT AND THE WORLD WAR 
 
 On America entering the war, he was eager to 
 take a hand in the fight which he had so long 
 urged upon the country, and he offered to raise 
 
114 GOOD STORIES 
 
 four divisions for the front. The army officers 
 coldly opposing all volunteering and the Admin- 
 istration having adopted a rule against placing 
 in posts of command any but professionally 
 trained soldiers, he appealed to the President and 
 Congress. The latter responded by authorizing 
 the creation of a special organization for him, 
 but the President sustained the objections of his 
 military advisers. The disappointed applicant 
 was obliged to content himself with retorting 
 upon the President: "I am the only one he has 
 kept out of the war. This war for me is an 
 exclusive war. I have been blackballed by the 
 Committee on National Efficiency, but I have 
 three sons over there." Then, turning to Major- 
 General Barry, the Commander of the Central 
 Department, he said: "General, I have been 
 Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of 
 the United States for nearly eight years. I gave 
 you your commission as a Major-General. I am 
 perfectly willing to serve under you, or under 
 any other General the War Department may 
 select. All I ask is that I may have the military 
 rank I had in the Spanish-American war, that of 
 a Brigadier-General." 
 
 But it was not to be. There were already 
 enrolled, as I now remember, nearly fifty thou- 
 sand volunteers most anxious to serve under him. 
 His great heart, as those who knew him inti- 
 mately can testify, was sorely disappointed be- 
 cause he was not allowed to serve as he desired. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 115 
 
 HIS SONS IN THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Word came to him that his two eldest sons, 
 who had obtained commissions at the Platts- 
 burgh training camp, had thrown up their com- 
 missions to enlist in the expeditionary force 
 under Pershing. 
 
 "I wouldn't have it otherwise for the world," 
 he said. "And yet I can't bring myself to think 
 of it. I have lived my life. My work is prob- 
 ably done. It wouldn't make the slightest dif- 
 ference if I were killed. But it's different with 
 boys with their lives before them. Of course I 
 know in reason that if all my boys go over early 
 in the war, they won't all come back. We can't 
 talk about it yet at home." 
 
 A few weeks later he remarked to a friend 
 that for the first time in his life he cpuldn't 
 sleep. He had always been able to throw off 
 any worries while he was President. "But now," 
 he said, "I wake up in the middle of the night 
 wondering if the boys are all right, and thinking 
 how I could tell their mother if anything 
 happened." 
 
 Then came Quentin's death in France. A 
 friend saw the Colonel at the Harvard Club a 
 few minutes after the news had come. 
 
 "I know what you want to say," the Colonel 
 said. "I know what is in your heart. But we 
 mustn't think about that. The only thing to 
 think of now is how to win the war." 
 
 He found no small consolation for his own en- 
 
116 GOOD STORIES 
 
 forced absence from the field in the military 
 service of his four sons. He was immensely- 
 proud of the rank and decorations they won by 
 their gallantry in France and of the honorable 
 wounds incurred by two of them — Theodore and 
 Archie. At the supreme sacrifice of his youngest 
 son, Quentin, who fell battling in the air, he 
 turned a brave front to the public and gave no 
 outward sign of the cruel hurt that the blow 
 must have caused the heart of a father so fond. 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 Ever since his return from the South Amer- 
 ican adventure he had been less and less a well 
 man. Although he fought ever so vahantly 
 the malady which he brought back from the 
 tropics, he could not shake it off. Impatiently 
 as he resisted the limitations it set to his activ- 
 ities, he was compelled with increasing frequency 
 to yield to its remorseless progress and accept 
 from time to time a period of invalidism at home 
 or in a hospital. 
 
 On each occasion he broke his truce with the 
 physicians at the fi-rst chance and returned to 
 the firing line. "Only those who are fit to live 
 do not fear to die," he wrote in the shadow of 
 the loss of his baby boy. "Both life and death 
 are parts of the same great adventure," 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 117 
 
 "IN FOR A BIT OF SLEEP" 
 
 On the last night at Oyster Bay, after he bid 
 his family good-night, Mrs. Roosevelt had been 
 alone with him, and his old colored servant had 
 been with him at 11:15 when he said: "Jim, 
 will you turn out the light? I am in for a bit 
 of sleep." And he never woke up. 
 
 ROOSEVELT'S FAMOUS EPIGRAMS 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt was a great maker of 
 epigrams. The short and pithy phrases of his 
 coinage now are part of the language of the 
 country. It will be long before anyone who sees 
 or hears the words "Bully!" and "Dee-lighted!" 
 or the phrase "the strenuous life," will not think 
 at once of Colonel Roosevelt. 
 
 Some of the striking expressions of Colonel 
 Roosevelt's making, or of such pointed use by 
 him that, although he did not originate them, 
 they always will be associated with him instead 
 of the author, follow: 
 
 "Speak softly, but carry a Big Stick." T^is 
 was his early definition of his political creed. 
 And for years thereafter no cartoon of the 
 Colonel was considered complete unless it con- 
 tained the artist's conception of the Big Stick. 
 
 "My hat is in the ring," was the way he 
 announced he was a candidate for President. 
 
 "My spear knows no brother," was a quotation 
 
118 GOOD STORIES 
 
 that he used so effectively that it generally is 
 associated with him. 
 
 "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead," was the 
 Roosevelt answer when the Moorish bandit cap- 
 tured and held for ransom Perdicaris, an Amer- 
 ican citizen. 
 
 "I have teeth and I can use them." So said 
 Roosevelt when he was arguing- with General 
 Miles over the case of Rear Admiral Schley. 
 
 "The short and ugly word" became a popular 
 phrase throughout the country just as soon as 
 Roosevelt used it in his verbal brush with the 
 late E. H. Harriman. 
 
 "Malefactors of great wealth" was a phrase 
 made famous by Roosevelt. 
 
 "Damn the law! Build the canal!" That is 
 what Roosevelt is reported to have said when his 
 advisers started to tell him the legal obstacles in 
 the way of linking the Atlantic and the Pacific 
 at Panama. 
 
 "I am for the square deal" was one of the 
 expressions in an early speech that gave the 
 country a popular catchword. 
 
 "The police board does not make nor repeal 
 laws. It enforces them." So said Roosevelt when 
 he was Police Commissioner of New York City. 
 And those were widely quoted words at the time. 
 
 "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for 
 the Lord." When Roosevelt used that phrase to 
 describe the political fight he and his followers 
 made in the so-called Bull Moose campaign there 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 119 
 
 was great business of looking up Armageddon, 
 which was found in the Bible. 
 
 "I feel like a Bull Moose," was an expression 
 that gave that name to the Progressive wing of 
 the Republican party. 
 
 "Better faithful than famous," was the aphor- 
 ism he evolved for himself when he entered 
 politics. 
 
 "I took the Canal Zone and let Congress 
 debate," was another widely quoted sentence. 
 
 "Never strike soft. If you must hit a man, 
 put him to sleep." That was a sentiment fre- 
 quently expressed by Roosevelt in his latter-day 
 speeches. 
 
 "If you ever print anything without my per- 
 mission, I shall deny it," he said when newly 
 inaugurated as Governor to newspaper reporters. 
 And they remembered it. 
 
 "Weasel words," was the phrase he applied to 
 words of President Wilson. 
 
 "Mollycoddles!" "Ananias!" "Traitor!" "Pus- 
 syfooter!" "Cravens and weaklings!" "Muck- 
 rakers!" were among the superlatives that 
 Colonel Roosevelt put with verbs and names in 
 public attacks on those with whom he was 
 displeased. 
 
 "I do not number party loyalty among my 
 commandments." This was one of his most 
 famous expressions, made when he declared war 
 on political bosses. 
 
 "Someone asked me why I did not get an 
 agreement with Colombia," he said on another 
 
120 GOOD STORIES 
 
 occasion. "They might just as well ask me why 
 I do not nail cranberry jelly to the wall." 
 
 A FAVORITE POEM 
 
 This poem by Hamlin Garland was one of 
 Colonel Roosevelt's favorites: 
 
 wild woods and rivers and untrod sweeps of 
 
 sod, 
 
 1 exult that I know you, 
 
 I have felt you and worshipped you. 
 
 I cannot be robbed of the memory 
 
 Of horse and plain, 
 
 Of bird and flower. 
 
 Nor the song of the illimitable West Wind. 
 
 ROOSEVELT AS A BOY 
 
 In Roosevelt's boyhood home, under the dis- 
 cipline of his father, there was plenty of time 
 for play, but none for idleness. If he was not 
 strong, he was at least all boy, if we are to 
 accept the description of one of his earlier inti- 
 mates, the Long Island stage driver on whose 
 front seat "Ted" frequently rode. 
 
 "He was a reg'lar boy. He was alius outdoors 
 climbin' trees and goin' bird nestin'. I remem- 
 ber him partic'lar like because he had queer 
 livin' things in his pockets." 
 
 The child was indeed father to the man, and 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 121 
 
 many of the tastes acquired in boyhood re- 
 mained with him to the end, in a highly devel- 
 oped and specialized form. 
 
 Weakness so often interrupted the studies of 
 the young Theodore that he took no pleasure in 
 the competition of the schoolroom, although the 
 records of the public school, which he attended 
 for a time, give him 97 in geography, 96 in 
 history, and 98 in rhetoric. His 86 in spelling 
 was pretty good for a spelling reformer. It is 
 remembered by his teachers that he was strong 
 for composition and declamation, and that he 
 had uncommon skill in map-making. His school- 
 ing, however, was necessarily irregular, and he 
 was prepared for college by a private instructor. 
 
 HIS EARLY DEMOCRACY 
 
 When Theodore was about ten years old his 
 parents took a house overlooking the Hudson 
 River in Dobbs Ferry for a summer. The prop- 
 erty is known as the Paton place, and its asso- 
 ciation with the Roosevelts has been a source of 
 
 ft- 
 
 pride to the older people of the pretty village 
 opposite the Palisades. 
 
 Theodore is rem.embered by Dobbs Ferry men 
 who were boys with him as small of stature for 
 his years and inclined to be delicate. They re- 
 member also that the force of character, courage 
 and democracy that later became dominant char- 
 acteristics were noticeable in his dealings with 
 
122 GOOD STORIES 
 
 his companions. Unlike the other youths of 
 prominent families that lived on the big estates 
 along Broadway, from the first days of his 
 family arrival he took part with energy in the 
 boyish enterprises of those among whom he 
 found himself. He was usually to be found with 
 a crowd of boys on expeditions to the Saw Mill 
 River to swim and fish, and on these hikes, 
 though many were bigger and stronger than he, 
 none outdid him in endurance. 
 
 Roosevelt's particular pal among the boys was 
 John MacNichol, and the friendship of the two 
 lasted until the day of the Colonel's death, when 
 MacNichol told how he came to be the friend of 
 Roosevelt's Dobbs Ferry days. 
 
 Roosevelt, assertive in what he believed to be 
 right, quarreled with two other boys of the 
 "gang." Both of the other boys were bigger 
 than Roosevelt, but he had raised his arms and 
 was awaiting the onrush of the two when Mac- 
 Nichol arrived. MacNichol, who was strong for 
 his age, took Roosevelt's part and his two foes 
 called off the impending fight. 
 
 In later years MacNichol became the village 
 blacksmith. While he was hammering at his 
 anvil his old friend was mounting to the great 
 position he attained. Roosevelt did not forget 
 his old friend, and on the not infrequent occa- 
 sions when he passed through Dobbs Ferry after 
 automobiles made Broadway along the Hudson a 
 popular highway, he always stopped at Mac- 
 Nichol's shop for a chat. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 123 
 
 When the former President died, MacNichol 
 showed a memento which he cherishes most 
 highly. It is a letter on White House stationery 
 from President Roosevelt, thanking him for a 
 horseshoe which the blacksmith had fashioned 
 with particular care. 
 
 NOT A BRONCHO BUSTER 
 
 When Mr. Roosevelt went into the cattle busi- 
 ness he started with five hundred steers, and we 
 are told: "He worked for a part of a season as 
 a cowboy. He had his own 'string' of horses 
 and they were as ugly and ill-tempered as the 
 majority of cow-horses. He was not a broncho- 
 breaker, as he has been pictured to be, and he 
 took no unnecessary chances in mounting or 
 endeavoring to tame an especially ugly horse. 
 But he did not shrink from riding his own 
 horses when they cut up the customary capers 
 of mustangs, and although he was sometimes 
 thrown and on one or two occasions pretty badly 
 bruised and hurt, he stuck to his mounts until 
 he had mastered them." 
 
 One of the early and useful friends of Mr. 
 Roosevelt in the Wild West was the late Colonel 
 William F. Cody, the famous Buffalo Bill, and 
 many a wild ride they had. Their friendship 
 lasted to the day of Cody's death. 
 
 In his life on the ranch, Mr. Roosevelt realized 
 all the benefits he had anticipated, and it ap- 
 
124 GOOD STORIES 
 
 pealed to him because "the charm of ranch life 
 comes in its freedom, and the vigorous open-air 
 existence it forces a man to lead." 
 
 On his own ranch he experienced the very 
 hardest part of the work. On one occasion he 
 was for thirty-six hours in the saddle, dismount- 
 ing only to change horses or to eat. 
 
 STRENUOUS TIMES 
 
 At one time he was helping to bring a thou- 
 sand head of young cattle down to his lower 
 range. At night he and a cowboy stood guard. 
 The cattle had been without water that day, and 
 in their thirst they tried to break away. In the 
 darkness Mr. Roosevelt could dimly see the 
 shadowy outhnes of the frantic herd. With whip 
 and spurs he circled around the herd, turning 
 back the beasts at one point just in time to 
 wheel and keep them in at another. After an 
 hour of violent exertion, by which time he was 
 dripping with sweat, he and his companion 
 finally quieted the herd. 
 
 On still another occasion he was out on the 
 plains when a regular blizzard came. The cattle 
 began to drift before the storm. They were 
 frightened and maddened by the quick, sharp 
 flashes of lightning and the stinging rain. The 
 men darted to and fro before them and beside 
 them, heedless of danger, checking them at each 
 point where they threatened to break through. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 125 
 
 The thunder was terrific. Peal followed peal. 
 Each flash of lightning showed a dense array of 
 tossing horns and staring eyes. At last, how- 
 ever, when the storm was raging in fury, and 
 when it seemed impossible to hold the herd to- 
 gether any longer, the corrals were reached, and 
 by desperate efforts Mr. Roosevelt and his com- 
 panions managed to turn the herds into the 
 barns. It was such work as this that brought 
 the future President self-reliance and hardihood 
 and made him in later life a firm advocate of 
 horsemanship. 
 
 THE WRESTLING GOVERNOR 
 
 When Mr. Roosevelt entered upon his public 
 career heavy burdens were laid upon him, and 
 to keep in condition to meet the hard physical 
 and mental strain, he again turned to boxing and 
 wrestling for exercise. When Governor of New 
 York the champion middleweight v/restler of 
 America came several evenings a week to wrestle 
 with him. The news of the purchase of a 
 wrestling mat for the Governor's mansion at 
 Albany created consternation on the part of the 
 State Comptroller, but was greeted with great 
 enthusiasm by the red-blooded men to whom fHe 
 Governor had become an idol. Many of these 
 would have given all they possessed to have been 
 able to stand at the edge of the mat and cheer 
 their champion in his strenuous amusement. To 
 
126 GOOD STORIES 
 
 the middleweight champion the job was a hard 
 one. Not because he experienced any difficulty 
 in downing the Governor, but because he was so 
 awed by the Governor's position and responsibil- 
 ities that he was always in dire anxiety lest the 
 Governor should break an arm or crack a rib. 
 This gingerly attitude of his opponent exasper- 
 ated the Colonel. He didn't feel that it was fair 
 for him to be straining like a tiger to get a half- 
 Nelson hold on the champion while the Fatter 
 seemed to feel that he must play the nurse to 
 him. After repeated urgings, he managed to 
 get the champion to throw him about in real 
 earnest — then he was satisfied. 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt relates in his reminiscences 
 that, while he was in the New York Legislature, 
 he had as a sparring partner a second-rate prize- 
 fighter who used to come to his rooms every 
 morning and put on the gloves for a half-hour. 
 One morning he failed to arrive, but a few days 
 later there came a letter from him. It developed 
 that he was then in jail; that boxing had been 
 simply an avocation with him, and that his prin- 
 cipal business was that of a burglar. 
 
 MOST FAMOUS DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH 
 
 The war between Japan and Russia which had 
 begun in February, 1904, was to result eventually 
 in one of the most famous diplomatic triumphs 
 of Roosevelt's seven and a half years in the 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 127 
 
 White House. While the terrific land and sea 
 fights in the Orient were holding the attention 
 of the world, Roosevelt and his remarkable Sec- 
 retary of State, the late John Hay, sent forth 
 first the famous "Hay Note," asking that the two 
 warring countries respect the neutrality of China 
 lest a greater catastrophe be precipitated. 
 
 Russia and Japan agreed to the American 
 request. 
 
 The Russian-Japanese war was constantly in 
 his thoughts. The beginning of his full term 
 seemed to the President the psychological moment 
 to propose to Japan and Russia that they get 
 together peacefully and thresh out their differ- 
 ences in conference. On June 7, 1905, the Presi- 
 dent sent a note to the Czar and another to the 
 Mikado asking them if they did not think it 
 would be best for all mankind if they met to 
 arrange terms for peace. Following a long dis- 
 cussion as to the exact spot where they should 
 meet, the peace envoys from Japan and Russia 
 began to confer at Portsmouth, N. H., on August 
 10, 1905 — Washington being too hot at that time 
 of the year. 
 
 Within eight days the delegates had come to 
 a deadlock. President Roosevelt then induced 
 the German Kaiser to join him in an appeal to 
 the rulers of Russia and Japan. The joint ap- 
 peal succeeded in inducing the Mikado to forego 
 his demand for money indemnity, and caused the 
 Czar to give to Japan much of the island of 
 Saghalien. 
 
128 GOOD STORIES 
 
 The peace treaty was signed on September 5, 
 1905. Promptly and unanimously the world arose 
 and acclaimed Roosevelt the fighter as the great- 
 est peacemaker of the age. The following year 
 he received the Nobel Peace Prize of $40,000 for 
 that great service. This prize is given annually 
 to the person who shall have done most during 
 the year to promote the peace of the world. 
 
 REGULATING RAILROAD RATES 
 
 It was in 1905 that President Roosevelt began 
 fighting for the regulation of railroad rates. The 
 Esch-Townsend bill, his first essay in that line, 
 was beaten, as he had expected it to be; but in 
 1906 he forced the Heyburn bill through Con- 
 gress in the face of such bitter opposition from 
 his own party that he was obliged to form at one 
 time an alliance with the Democrats. The latter 
 charged bitterly that he threw them aside like 
 a squeezed lemon when they had served his pur- 
 pose, and the air was full of criminations and 
 recriminations. 
 
 But whatever he may have done with the 
 Democrats, he had no hesitation in breaking with 
 the leaders of his own party, such as Aldrich, 
 and putting in the forefront one of the younger 
 Senators, Dolliver of Iowa, and had the satisfac- 
 tion of putting his bill through. 
 
 On April 14, 1906, he publicly expressed his 
 advocacy of a national inheritance tax, saying: 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 129 
 
 "We shall ultimately have to consider the adop- 
 tion of some such scheme as that of a progressive 
 tax on all fortunes," and subsequently he de- 
 clared himself in favor of an income tax. 
 
 THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 One of the greatest, if not the greatest, 
 achievement of Mr. Roosevelt's full term was the 
 clearing away of difficulties and the inauguration 
 of actual work on the long-discussed plan to join 
 the Atlantic and the Pacific by means of the 
 Panama Canal. It is not too much to say that 
 the world owes the canal to the initiative and 
 energy of Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 In 1906 the Spooner bill was passed, giving 
 the President authority to buy the old French 
 Panama Canal Company, lay out a water route 
 across the isthmus, reorganize a canal commis- 
 sion, and begin to build. The work meant not 
 only a battle against mountainous engineering 
 problems, but notable medical and sanitary prob- 
 lems that till then had defied the world. 
 
 How well the work was done is fresh in the 
 public mind. 
 
 While Mr. Roosevelt was tackling his canal 
 problems he put through far-reaching legislative 
 and diplomatic coups that included the momen- 
 tous passage of a bill giving Federal control, or 
 at least direction, of the business of interstate 
 commerce carriers; the suppression in the same 
 
130 GOOD STORIES 
 
 year, 1906, of a Cuban insurrection against 
 President Estrada Palma; and the inception of 
 a wide-spreading conservation of America's nat- 
 ural resources. 
 
 AN ALPHABET OF ENEMIES 
 
 It was late in 1905 that the Wall Street 
 Journal alphabetically called the roll of Mr. 
 Roosevelt's enemies as follows: 
 
 A lot of people who are afraid of a foreign 
 policy. 
 
 Bribers and corruptionists of all kinds. 
 
 Corporations that fear publicity. 
 
 Disappointed office seekers. 
 
 Every person who still thinks that the Pres- 
 ident ought not to have received John 
 Mitchell or Booker Washington. 
 
 Financial interests that have been or are being 
 investigated. 
 
 Great men who find that Roosevelt is in their 
 way. 
 
 High finance that puts itself above the law. 
 
 Interests that want to kill or delay the 
 Panama Canal. 
 
 Jacobins who are ready for anything that will 
 serve to turn the "ins" out. 
 
 Kangaroo politicians strong in their capacity 
 to kick. 
 "Law honesty." 
 
 Men who squirmed under the enforcement of 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 131 
 
 the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
 
 Nicaragua Canal advocates. 
 
 Odell (Governor of New York). 
 
 Opponents of government regulation, especially 
 railways. 
 
 Pennsylvania's corrupt machine, recently re- 
 buked at the polls. 
 
 Railroads that have violated the law. 
 
 Sugar lobbyists who don't want fair play given 
 to the Philippines. 
 
 Shippers who want rebates. 
 
 Trusts that have become monopolies. 
 
 Usurers and others who don't like the doctrine 
 of the square deal. 
 
 Voters, now few in number, who want us to 
 give up the Philippines. 
 
 Washington correspondents who feel that they 
 have the right to run the White House. 
 
 Xanthospermous journalism eager for a new 
 sensation. 
 
 You may perhaps find a few more by inquiring 
 at 26 Broadway (Standard Oil headquar- 
 ters). 
 
 Zealots who think it right to destroy even a 
 reputation to benefit their party. 
 
 HOBNOBBED WITH THE KAISER 
 
 As a former President, his tour through 
 Europe was both triumphant and sensational. 
 He hobnobbed with the German Kaiser, lectured 
 
132 GOOD STORIES 
 
 at the Sorbonne and at Oxford University, was 
 received with high honors in Sweden and Hol- 
 land, and roused a storm in London by his speech 
 at the Guildhall. It was in this speech that he 
 lectured England on her duty in Egypt. He dis- 
 played an extraordinary familiarity with Egyp- 
 tian affairs, but brought down upon himself a 
 tempest of criticism by saying: 
 
 "Now, either you have the right to be in 
 Egypt or you have not. Either it is or is not 
 your duty to establish and keep order. If you 
 feel you have not the right to be in Egypt, if 
 you do not wish to establish and keep order 
 there, why, then, by all means get out. 
 
 "As I hope you feel that your duty to civil- 
 ized mankind and your fealty to your own great 
 traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the 
 fact and name agree, and show that you are 
 ready to meet in very deed the responsibility 
 which is yours." 
 
 The criticism which this speech brought down 
 on Roosevelt, to do the English justice, did not 
 come from them; it came chiefly from scandal- 
 ized Americans, who were horrified at the idea 
 of a fellow-American undertaking to lecture a 
 friendly power on its problems. The English 
 took it very well and seemed to like it. France 
 criticized it, and Germany was bitter. 
 
 FOUGHT ON ENEMY'S GROUND 
 
 In France, Roosevelt followed his usual policy 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 133 
 
 of intrepidly attacking what he believed to be 
 local evils in their home. It was not in London 
 nor in Berlin that he preached his anti-race 
 suicide doctrine; it was in Paris. It was from 
 the same motive that impelled him when during 
 his campaign for the Presidency in 1912 he re- 
 frained from attacking the Democratic party 
 until he got into the South, the home and birth- 
 place of the Democratic party, and delivered his 
 blast against it. If there had been anything 
 timorous about him he would have made his at- 
 tack in Minnesota, where it would have been safe. 
 Instead, he picked out Atlanta, where it is almost 
 treason to say a word against Democracy, and 
 where his audience was made up entirely of 
 Democrats. 
 
 His defiant challenge was met by a roar from 
 the audience. Their intention of howling him 
 down and keeping him from having a hearing 
 was manifest from the moment he began his 
 assault. For five minutes the tumult went on. 
 It seemed as if his speaking were at an end. 
 Roosevelt suddenly adopted one of the most un- 
 usual weapons ever employed by a stump speaker. 
 There was a table near him, and he leaped upon 
 it. The riotous mob was startled into stillness; 
 they had no idea of his purpose, and they waited 
 to see what he would do. Before they could re- 
 cover from their surprise he had shot half a 
 dozen sentences at them, and by that time they 
 had come under the spell and were willing to 
 give him a hearing. 
 
134 GOOD STORIES 
 
 THE SQUARE SPORTSMAN 
 
 Lieutenant Fortescue, a distant relative of the 
 Roosevelt family, sometimes put on the gloves 
 with the Colonel in the White House. One day, 
 feeling in fighting trim, Fortescue asked the 
 Colonel to box with him. Finally the latter 
 agreed to go four rounds. According to Joseph 
 Grant, detective sergeant of the Washington 
 police department, detailed to the White House 
 to "guard" the President, it was the fastest bout 
 he ever saw. 
 
 "The Colonel began to knock Lieutenant For- 
 tescue right and left in the second round," said 
 the detective. "His right and left got to the army 
 officer's jaw time after time, and the bout was 
 stopped in the third round to prevent the army 
 man from getting knocked out. Then the 
 Colonel turned to me and said: 1 think I can 
 do the same to you. Put on the gloves!' 
 
 "I drew them on reluctantly, and I put up the 
 fight of my life. The best I could do was to 
 prevent a decision and get a draw." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt numbered among his treasures 
 a penholder Bob Fitzsimmons made for him out 
 of a horseshoe, and a gold-mounted rabbit's foot 
 which John L. Sullivan gave to him for a talis- 
 man when he went on his African trip. 
 
 He championed the cause of prizefighters on 
 many occasions, though never hesitating to de- 
 nounce the crookedness that has attended the 
 commercializing of the ring. He held that power- 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 135 
 
 ful, vigorous men of strong animal development 
 must have some way in which their spirits can 
 find vent. His acts while Police Commissioner 
 of New York show clearly how he distinguished 
 between the art of boxing itself and the men 
 who try to make money out of it. On one hand, 
 he promoted the establishment of boxing clubs in 
 bad neighborhoods in order to draw the attention 
 of street gangs from knifing and gun-fighting. 
 On the other hand, finding that the prize ring 
 had become hopelessly debased and was run for 
 the benefit of hangers-on who permitted brutal- 
 ity in order to make money out of it, he aided, 
 as Governor, in the passage of a bill putting a 
 stop to professional boxing for money. 
 
 REST IN PEACE 
 
 When the sad news of the son's death was 
 ofl!icially confirmed, General Pershing cabled 
 Colonel Roosevelt that if desired the body of 
 Quentin would be removed to America. France 
 meanwhile had paid the fullest honors to the 
 dead aviator, and the Roosevelt family declined 
 to accept the War Department's offer. 
 
 In a letter to the Chief of Staff at Washing- 
 ton, Colonel Roosevelt wrote: 
 
 "Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most 
 respectful but most emphatic protest against the 
 proposed course so far as our son Quentin is 
 concerned. We have always believed that 
 
136 GOOD STORIES 
 
 '"Where the tree falls, 
 There let it lie.' 
 
 "We know that many persons feel entirely 
 different, but to us it is painful and harrowing 
 long- after death to move the poor body from 
 which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that 
 Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where 
 he fell in battle and where the foeman buried 
 him. 
 
 "After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I 
 intend to visit the grave and then to have a 
 small stone put up by us, but not disturbing 
 what has already been erected to his memory 
 by his friends and American comrades-in-arms." 
 
 ACHIEVEMENTS AS PRESIDENT 
 
 President Roosevelt's elected term ended in 
 1909 after achievements of which the following 
 are historical: 
 
 1. Dolliver-Hepbum railroad act. 
 
 2. Extension of forest reserve. 
 
 3. National irrigation act. 
 
 4. Improvement of waterways and reservation 
 
 of water power sites. 
 
 5. Employers' liability act. 
 
 6. Safety appliance act. 
 
 7. Regulation of railroad employees' hours of 
 
 labor. 
 
 8. Establishment of Department of Commerce 
 
 and Labor. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 137 
 
 9. Pure food and drugs act. 
 10 Federal meat inspection. 
 11. Navy doubled in tonnage and greatly in- 
 creased in efficiency, 
 12 Battleship fleet sent around the world. 
 
 13. State militia brought into co-ordmation with 
 
 the army. 
 
 14. Canal Zone acquired and work of excavation 
 
 pushed with increased energy. 
 
 15. Development of civil self-government in 
 
 insular possessions. 
 
 16. Second intervention in Cuba; Cuba restored 
 
 to the Cubans. 
 
 17. Finances of Santo Domingo adjusted. 
 18 Alaska boundary disputes settled. 
 
 >. 19. Reorganization of the consular service. 
 ? 20 Settlement of the coal strike of 1902. 
 
 21. The Government upheld in the Northern 
 
 Securities decision. 
 
 22. Conviction of post office grafters and public 
 
 land thieves. 
 
 23. Investigation of the sugar trust customs 
 
 frauds and resulting prosecutions. 
 24 Suits begun against the Standard Oil and 
 tobacco companies and other corporations 
 for violation of the Sherman anti-trust act. 
 
 25. Corporations forbidden to contribute to polit- 
 
 ical campaign funds. 
 
 26. The door of China kept open to American 
 
 commerce. 
 
 27. The settlement of the Russo-Japanese war by 
 
 the treaty of Portsmouth. 
 
138 GOOD STORIES 
 
 28. Diplomatic entanglements created by tHe 
 
 Pacific Coast prejudice against Japanese 
 immigration avoided. 
 
 29. Twenty-four treaties of general arbitration 
 
 negotiated. 
 
 30. Interest-bearing debt reduced by more than 
 
 $90,000,000. 
 
 31. Annual conference of Governors of states 
 
 inaugurated. 
 
 32. Movement for conservation of natural re- 
 
 sources inaugurated. 
 
 33. Movement for the improvement of conditions 
 
 of country life inaugurated. 
 In addition. President Roosevelt recommended 
 reforms and policies subsequently obtained by 
 his successor, among them being: 
 
 1. Reform of the banking and currency system. 
 
 2. Inheritance tax. 
 
 3. Income tax. 
 
 4. Passage of a new employers' liability act to 
 
 meet objections raised by the Supreme 
 Court. 
 
 5. Postal savings bank. 
 
 6. Parcel post. 
 
 7. Revision of the Sherman anti-trust act. 
 
 8. Legislation to prevent overcapitalization, 
 
 stock watering and manipulations by 
 common carriers. 
 
 9. Legislation compelling incorporation under 
 
 Federal laws of corporations engaged in 
 interstate commerce. 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 139 
 
 HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 
 
 The published works of Theodore Roosevelt 
 were, in the order of their appearance, as follows: 
 "The Naval War of 1812" (1882). 
 "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" (1885). 
 "Life of Thomas Hart Benton" (1887). 
 "Life of Gouverneur Morris" (1887). 
 "Ranch Life and Hunting Trails" (1888). 
 "Essays on Practical Politics" (1888). 
 "New York" in "Historic Towns" (1890). 
 "American Big Game Hunting" (1893). 
 "The Wilderness Hunter" (1893). 
 "Hero Tales from American History," with 
 Henry Cabot Lodge (1895). 
 
 "Winning of the West," four volumes (1889- 
 \ 1896) , the most important of his works. 
 
 "American Ideals and Other Essays" (1897), 
 a collection of magazine articles. 
 "Trail and Campfire" (1897). 
 "Big Game Hunting in the Rockies and on the 
 Great Plains" (1899). 
 
 "The Rough Riders" (1899). 
 "Life of Oliver Cromwell" (1899). 
 "The Strenuous Life" (1900), a collection of 
 essays and addresses. 
 
 "Good Hunting of Big Game in the West 
 
 (1907). ,»^^ 
 
 "Addresses and Presidential Messages, 1902- 
 
 1904" (1904). . XT + " 
 
 "Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter 
 (1906), besides portions of works like Volume VI 
 
140 GOOD STORIES 
 
 in "History of the Royal Navy of England" and 
 "The Deer and Antelope of North America" 
 (1902), in "The Deer Farmly." 
 
 "African Game Trails" (1910). 
 
 "The New Nationalism" (1910). 
 
 "Realizable Ideals"— the Earl Lectures (1912). 
 
 "Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood" 
 (1912). 
 
 "History as Literature, and Other Essays" 
 (1913). 
 
 "Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography" 
 (1913). 
 
 "Life History of African Game Animals," two 
 volumes (1914). 
 
 "Through the Brazilian Wilderness" (1914). 
 
 "America and the World War" (1915). 
 
 "A Booklover's Holidays in the Open" (1916). 
 
 "Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916). 
 
 "Foes of Our Own Household" (1917). 
 
 "National Strength and International Duty," 
 Stafford Little Lectures, Princeton University 
 (1917). 
 
 "The Great Adventure," his last book, pub- 
 lished just before Christmas, 1918, by Scribner's. 
 
 Among his many popular magazine articles 
 and addresses are: "American Ideals," "True 
 Americanism," "The Many Virtues and Practical 
 Politics," "The College Graduate and Public Life," 
 "Phases of State Legislation," "How Not to Help 
 Our Poorer Brother," "The Monroe Doctrine," 
 "Washington's Forgotten Maxim," "National 
 Life and Character," "Social Evolution," "The 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 141 
 
 Law of Civilization and Decay," "Expansion and 
 Peace," "Latitude and Longitude of Reform," 
 "Fellow Feeling a Political Factor," "Civic Help- 
 fulness," "Character and Success." 
 
 HIS FINAL MESSAGE 
 
 On Saturday, January 4, he dictated a message 
 which was read at a meeting of the American 
 Defense Society at the Hippodrome, New York, 
 on Sunday night, a few hours before he died. 
 In this message he phrased afresh the thoughts 
 that had been burning in his mind, and this was 
 his last ringing message to the American people : 
 
 "There must be no sagging back in the fight 
 for Americanism, merely because the war is 'over. 
 There are plenty of persons who have already 
 made the assertion that they believe the Amer- 
 ican people have a short memory, and that they 
 intend to revive all the foreign associations 
 Vv^hich most directly interfere with the complete 
 Americanization of our people. 
 
 "Our principle in this matter should be simple. 
 In the first place, we should insist that if the 
 immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes 
 an American and assimilates himself to us, he 
 shall be treated on an exact equality with every- 
 one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate 
 against any such man because of creed or birth- 
 place or origin. But this is predicated upon the 
 man's becoming in fact an American and nothing 
 
142 GOOD STORIES 
 
 but an American. If he tries to keep segregated 
 with men of his own origin and separated from 
 the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part 
 as an American. 
 
 "There can be no divided allegiance here. Any 
 man who says he is an American, but something 
 else also, isn't an American at all. We have 
 room for but one flag, the American flag, and 
 this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all 
 wars against hberty and civilization, just as 
 much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation 
 to which we are hostile. 
 
 "We have room for but one language here, and 
 that is the American language, for we intend to 
 see that the crucible turns our people out as 
 Americans, of American nationality, and not as 
 dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we 
 have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is 
 loyalty to the American people." 
 
 Captain Archie Roosevelt was to have read 
 this characteristic message in the Hippodrome, 
 but on the Saturday he and his wife received 
 word from Boston of the death of her father, 
 Thomas S. Lockwood. 
 
\ 
 
 ABOUT ROOSEVELT 143 
 
 ROOSEVELT CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Bom at No. 28 East 20th St., New York 
 
 City, October 27 ^^^" 
 
 Graduated at Harvard 1^^^ 
 
 Law student (New York University) 1881 
 
 Elected to New York legislature t^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 times 
 
 Republican candidate for Speaker 1883 
 
 Delegate to New York Republican State Con-^^^^ 
 
 vention 
 
 First of the four Delegates-at-Large from 
 
 New York to Republican National Con-^^^^ 
 
 vention - 
 
 Ranchman in North Dakota 1884-1889 
 
 Republican candidate for Mayor of New^^^^ 
 
 York 
 
 United States Civil Service C^^^^^'^^^l^ggliggg 
 
 President New York Police Commission^-„„.^^^^ 
 Assistant Secretary United States Navy^^.^--^^^^ 
 
144 GOOD STORIES 
 
 Organized Rough Riders (First U. S. Volun- 
 teer Cavalry), Lieutenant-Colonel and 
 Colonel in Cuba Campaign, in which he 
 took the lead in the battles of Las Gua- 
 simas and San Juan Hill Ig9g 
 
 Governor of New York 1899-1900 
 
 Vice-President of United States 1901 
 
 Succeeded to the Presidency September 14, IBQl 
 
 Elected President (by largest majority ever 
 given a candidate) j9Q4 
 
 President of United States 71/2 years....l901-1909 
 
 Initiated our Forest and Land and River 
 Reclamation Policy 19Q2 
 
 Settled the coal strike I902 
 
 Enforced the Monroe Doctrine in Venezuela, 
 1902-1903, and in Santo Domingo 1905-1907 
 
 Recognized Republic of Panama and initiated 
 construction of Panama Canal 1903 
 
 Re-elected President I904 
 
 Negotiated the Russo-Japanese Peace 
 ^"-^^^y - 1905 
 
 Outlined solution of Algeciras Conference 
 concerning Africa (France, Germany, 
 Spam, Morocco, Italy and United States) ..1906 
 
 Received the Nobel Peace Prize 1906 
 
ABOUT ROOSEVELT 145 
 
 Established Roosevelt Foundation for Indus- 
 trial Peace 1907 
 
 Secured Santo Domingo Treaty, recognizing 
 Monroe Doctrine 1907 
 
 Sent our fleet around the world — 42,000 
 miles — (first national fleet to circumnavi- 
 gate the globe) 1907-1908 
 
 Assembled first House of Governors in Con- 
 servation movement 1908 
 
 Editor of "The Outlook" 1909-1914 
 
 Tour of Africa and Europe 1909-1910 
 
 Special Ambassador to England at funeral of 
 Edward VII 1910 
 
 Lectured at European Universities, Oxford, 
 Paris, and Berlin (delivering the Romanes 
 Lecture at Oxford) 1910 
 
 Led the Progressive campaign 1912 
 
 Toured South America 1913 
 
 Toured South America again ; discovered and 
 explored 600 miles of unknown river, 
 which the Brazilian Government named 
 after him, Rio Teodoro 1914 
 
 Attacked "invisible government" in New 
 York 1914 
 
146 GOOD STORIES 
 
 Proved his attack and defeated Barnes libel 
 suit 1915 
 
 Initiated the Preparedness movement 1916 
 
 Declined Progressive nomination and sup- 
 ported Hughes 1916 
 
 Organized Roosevelt Legion of 150,000 men 
 for service in the World War, and ten- 
 dered it to the Government 1917 
 
 Championed more efficient and vigorous 
 prosecution of war 1918 
 
 Gave four sons to the service (three 
 wounded, one killed) 1918 
 
 Turned over Nobel Peace Prize to Soldiers' 
 Aid Society 1918 
 
 Editorial writer for the "Kansas City Star"..1918 
 
 Passed away in sleep at his home in Oyster 
 Bay, 4:15 a. m., Monday, January 6 1919 
 
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 STORIES FROM THE TRENCHES 
 
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 The jolly tales by and about the soldiers are here 
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 are all "stories" they also are all true to fact, 
 which increases your interest in them many fold. 
 This amusing book should be in every American 
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 WARTIME AND PATRIOTIC SELECTIONS 
 
 For Recitation and Reading 
 
 By Carleton B. Case 
 160 Pages ArtLstic Paper Covers Price 50 Cents. 
 
 New edition just issued. The book that pleases 
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 side even to w^ar — and trust the laughter-loving 
 lads from this side of the water to see it in all its 
 funny aspects. 
 
 In consequence, we have here a bookful of the 
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 The very newest, largest and choicest collection 
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 why every good Ford joke is a compliment to 
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 VAUDEVILLE WIT 
 
 W^TH 75 CARTOONS 
 
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 160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 
 
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 160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 40 cents. 
 
 The anecdotes in this work are authenticated by 
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 160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 40 Cent*. 
 
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 **A little nonsense now and then 
 Is relished by the wisest men/* 
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 SOME IRISH SMILES 
 
 Bt Caeleton B. Case 
 
 160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 
 
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 ETIQUETTE 
 
 For Every Occasion 
 
 By Mortimer Chesterfield 
 
 160 Pages Paper Corera Price 40 Cents. 
 
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FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES MOTOR-BOATINQ 
 
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 A Little Nonsense " 40c 
 
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 Wit and Humor of Abraham Lincoln.... " 40c 
 
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USED BY U. S. GOV'T IN TH3 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 981 500 2 ^1 
 
 Ihe Automobile 
 Instructor 
 
 Revised Edition 1920 
 
 S50 Pages. Size 5>^x8V^ in. 
 Qoth Bound. 210 Illustrations. 
 
 i.» 
 
 By CLYDE H. PRATT, B. Sc, M. B. 
 
 Member National Society of Automotive Engitieers; 
 President The Cleveland Automobile School Co., etc., etc. 
 
 'T'HE new and enlarged edition of this authoritative work 
 * is now ready. It is the standard book for home study, 
 class-room, and reference for all who desire to master 
 this profitable and permanent profession. In use as the 
 daily text-book by automobile schools, boards of educa- 
 tion and Y. M. C. A. schools, as well as by thousands of 
 individuals. It teaches all the essentials about all makes 
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 acquire a full knowledge of how to operate and repair 
 motor cars. To the boy or man who feels that he cannot 
 afford to go to an automobile school, this work is in* 
 valuable — it is the book you want. Satisfaction guar- 
 anteed or your money back. This edition is just out — 
 the very latest word about motor cars. 
 
 PRICE, POSTPAID, $2.00. 
 
 SHREWESBURY PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 5525 West Lake Street, CHICAGO. U. S. A.