4 O ' ^' 0^, " "^ * »„S.^.» Vj. A* ^JKW^' .-0. 6 *.^^» *: ■ ^0 ^ J. ^0 'V -o.o' och-niaking Papers in U. S. His- tory. Franklin's Autobiography. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford. Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, and Other Poems. Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Gray's Elegy, etc., and Cowper's John Gilpin, etc. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Hale's The Man Without a Country. Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair. Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales (Se- lections). Hawthorne's Wonder-Book. Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Holmes' Poems. Homer's Iliad (Translated). Homer's Odyssey (Translated). Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days. Hugo's Les Miserables. Abridf ?d. Huxley's Selected Essays and Ad- dresses. Irving's Knickerbocker's History. Irving' s Life of Goldsmith. Irving's Sketch Book. Irving's Tales of a Traveller. Irving's The Alhambra. Keary's Heroes of Asgard. a Kempis : The Imitation of Christ. Klingsley's The Heroes. Kingsley's Westward Ho ! Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Lamb's The Essays of Elia. Letters from Many Pens. iMarmtUan'a ^nrk^t Ammran nnh EngltHli (EIubbub A Series of English Texts, edited for use in Elementary and Secondary Schools, with Critical Introductions, Notes, etc. oln's Addresses, Inaugurals, and tters. ihart's Life of Scott. Abridged. .iidon's Call of the Wild, ^^ngfellow's Evangeline. Longfellow's Hiawatha. Longfellow's Miles Standish. Longfellow's Miles Standish and Minor Poems. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Lowell's Earlier Essays. Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal. Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Macaulay's Essay on Hastings. Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive. Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Milton's Minor Poems. Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I. and n. Old English Ballads. Old Testament Selections. Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Parkman's Oregon Trail. Plutarch's Lives of CaesAr, Brutus, and Mark Antony. Poe's Poems. Poe's Prose Tales (Selections). Poems, Narrative and Lyrical. Pope's Homer's Iliad. Pope's Homer's Odyssey. Pope's The Rape of the Lock. Reade's Cloister and the Hearth. Representative Short Stories. Roosevelt's Writings. Rossetti's (Christina) Selected Poems. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. Ruskm's The Crown of Wild Olive and Queen of the Air. Scott's Guy Maimering. Scott's Ivanhoe. Scott's Kenilworth. Scott's Lady of the Lake. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. Scott's Marmion. Scott's Quentin Durward. Scott's Rob Roy. Scott's The Talisman. Select Orations. Selected Poems, for Required Read- ing in Secondary Schools. Selections from American Poetry. Selections for Oral Reading. Shakespeare's As You Like It. Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Shakespeare's Hamlet. Shakespeare's Henry V. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Shakespeare's King Lear. Shakespeare's Macbeth. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare's Richard H. Shakespeare's Richard IH. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's The Tempest. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Shelley and Keats: Poems. Sheridan's The Rivals and The School for Scandal. Short Stories. Short Stories and Selections. Southern Orators: Selections. Southern Poets: Selections. Southey's Life of Nelson. Spenser's Faerie Qucene, Book I. Stevenson's Kidnapped. Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey^ and An Inland Voyage. Stevenson's Treasure Island. Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Tennyson's In Memoriam. Tennyson's The Princess. Tennyson's Shorter Poems. Thackeray's English Humourists. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. Thoreau's Walden. Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay. Abridged. Virgil's ^neid. Washington's Farewell Address, and Webster's First Bunker Hill Ora- tion. Whittier's Snow-Bound and Other Early Poems. Wister's The Virginian. Woodman's Journal. Wordsworth's Shorter Poems. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. TORONTO THEODORE ROOSEVELT ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY MAURICE GARLAND FULTON ) ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 All rights reserved Copyright, 1920 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. PubUshed Aug. 1920. SEP -f !9?o ©CI.A597346 'VvO IN REMEMBRANCE OF R. B. F. 1849 1919 FROM WHOSE SUGGESTION THIS BOOK ORIGINATED Methinks, 'tis prize enough to be his son.** Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI PREFACE My aim has been to bring together passages of ap- preciable length selected from Theodore Roosevelt's Autobiography and from his more significant writings in the fields of history, adventure, public questions, and natural history. It was in these diverse fields that his wide interests, his intensity and enthusiasm and his habits of clear thinking led him to write vigorously and with authority. In these selections, moreover, are re- vealed the characteristics of his mind and spirit. Americanism can best be studied concretely through the careers of great Americans. For such a purpose few lives will be more useful than that of Roosevelt. If this book stimulates among the present and future generations of young Americans an interest in this great man's life and leadership and in his ideals for democracy practically applied, it will have fulfilled my purpose. My especial thanks are due to Mrs. Edith Carow Roosevelt for permission to use generously material from Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, without which this book would have been incomplete. M. G. F. Bloomington, Indiana. vu CONTENTS Introduction page Roosevelt^s Career xi Roosevelt/s Personality xiii Roosevelt as a Writer xxii Roosevelt/s Style xxx * Bibliography xxxv Autobiography Boyhood and Youth 1 The Vigor of Life 16 Entering Politics 28 In Cowboy Land 38 The Rough Riders ^5 The Presidency 65 Outdoors and Indoors 67 History The Backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies / . 93 The Historian of the Future 118 Adventure Bear Hunting Experiences 133 Getting Christmas Dinner on a Ranch 141 Citizenship True Americanism 149 The Strenuous Life 166 ix X CONTENTS PAGE Our Responsibilities as a Nation 173 The Man with the Muckrake 177 The Development of the American Nation 189 Conservation of Natural Resources 202 Duties of the Citizen 215 Last Words on Americanism 243 Natural History My Life as NaturaHst 247 Nature Fakirs -258 The Deer of North America 267 The Whitetail Deer 277 Observations on Concealing Coloration in African Animals 288 Animals of Central Brazil 303 Notes 315 INTRODUCTION RoosE\rELT's Career Roosevelt's career is so fully presented in the selec- tions from his autobiography included in this book that it is needless to attempt here a sketch of his life. Neverthe- less it may be helpful to give the landmarks of his career by the simple but convenient means of a table showing the notable dates. Born in New York City, October 27, 1858. • Graduated from Harvard University, June 30, 1880. Married Alice Hathaway Lee, October 27, 1880. Served in New York State Legislature, 1882-1884. His first wife died, February 14, 1884. Spent several years on ranch in North Dakota, 1883- 1886. Candidate for Mayor of New York City, 1886. Married Edith Kermit Carow, December 2, 1886. United States Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-1895. President of the New York Pohce Board, 1895-1897. Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1897-1898. Lieutenant-Colonel First Volunteer Cavalry, United States Army (^' Rough Riders''), May 6, 1898 (later be- came Colonel). Elected Governor of New York State, November 8, 1898. Elected Vice-President of the United States, Novem- ber 4, 1900. xi xii INTRODUCTION Succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of President McKinley, September 14, 1901. Elected President, November 8, 1904. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize for efforts in connection with the Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty, 1906. Retired to private Ufe upon expiration of Presidential term, March 4, 1909. Became contributing editor of The Outlook, 1909. Sailed for Africa on a hunting trip, March 23, 1909. Returned from African trip, arriving at New York, June 18, 1910. Announced candidac}?- for a second nomination for the Presidency, February 25, 1912. Broke with the Republican Party and formed the Progressive Party, June 22, 1912. Nominated for President by the Progressive Party, August 7, 1912. Shot, at Milwaukee, by John Schrank, October 14, 1912. Defeated for Presidency by Woodrow Wilson, Novem- ber 5, 1912. Started on hunting and exploring trip in South America, October 14, 1913. Discovered and explored the River Theodore in Brazil, February to April, 1914. Returned to New York, May 19, 1914. Declined Progressive nomination for Presidency and supported Hughes, the Republican nominee, 1916. After declaration of war with German}^, offered to raise an army division, but the War Department declined his offer, 1917. Died at Sagamore Hill, January 6, 1919. A record such as this, even though stripped of all detail INTRODUCTION xiii and enlargement, constitutes a most impressive career. But it represents inadequately the variety of Roosevelt's achievements. To do this, it should evidence his knowledge of history equalled by few, his hunting trips and explora- tions which made him familiar not only with remote parts of his own country but also with two of the less well- known continents, his standing among scientists as an authority on the habits of big game in America and in Africa, his popularity and effectiveness as a speaker, his wide range of reading to which might be applied De- Quincey's description of his own accomplishment. Finally his books and other writings sufficient in number and quality to give him an enduring reputation in the field of letters irrespective of his other achievements. Further- more his domestic life was filled with the manifold re- sponsibilities of a husband and father, responsibihties which he felt as intensely as those of his public life, and discharged as faithfully. Such diversified abihty as this seems to justify the statement made of him that ^^ since Csesar, perhaps no one has attained among crowded duties and great responsibilities, such high proficiency in so many separate fields of activity.^' Roosevelt's Personality On more than one occasion Roosevelt said of himself that he was simply a man of ordinary abilities who had made the most of the gifts that were his. He was doubt- less sincere in this opinion, but he was undeniably the possessor of native endowments such as come to few men. The elements of his extraordinary personality have been so sympathetically and fairly set forth by his life-long friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, in a memorial address xiv INTRODUCTION before Congress, that it is desirable to make a lengthy extract. ^'Theodore Roosevelt always believed that character was of greater worth and moment than anything else. He possessed abilities of the first order, which he was disposed to underrate because he set so much greater store upon the moral qualities which we bring together under the single word ^character.' ^^Let me speak first of his abilities. He had a powerful, well-trained, ever-active mind. He thought clearly, independently, and with originality and imagination. These priceless gifts were sustained by an extraordinary power of acquisition, joined to a greater quickness of apprehension, a greater swiftness in seizing upon the essence of a question, than I have ever happened to see in any other man. His reading began with natural history, then went to general history, and thence to the whole field of literature. He had a capacity for concentration which enabled him to read with remarkable rapidity anj'-thing which he took up, if only for a moment, and which separated him for the time being from everything going on about him. The subjects upon which he was well and widely informed would, if enumerated, fill a large space, and to this power of acquisition was united not only a tenacious but an extraordinaril}^ accurate memory. It was never safe to contest with him on any question of fact or figures, whether they related to the ancient Assy- rians or to the present-day conditions of the tribes of cen- tral Africa, to the Syracusan Expedition, as told by Thucydides, or to protective coloring in birds and animals. He knew and held details always at command, but he was not mastered by them. He never failed to see the forest INTRODUCTION XV on account of the trees or the city on account of the houses. ^^He made himself a writer, not only of occasional ad- dresses and essays, but of books. He had the trained thoroughness of the historian, as he showed in his history of the War of 1812 and of the Winning of the West, and nature had endowed him with that most enviable of gifts, the faculty of narrative and the art of the teller of tales. He knew how to weigh evidence in the historical scales and how to depict character. He learned to write with great ease and fluency. He was always vigorous, always energetic, always clear and forcible in everything he wrote — nobody could ever misunderstand him — and when he allowed himself time and his feehngs were deeply en- gaged he gave to the world many pages of beauty as well as power, not only in thought but in form and style. At the same time he made himself a public speaker, and here again, through a practice probably unequaled in amount, he became one of the most effective in all our history. In speaking, as in writing, he was always full of force and energy; he drove home his arguments and never was misunderstood. In many of his more carefully prepared addresses are to be found passages of impressive elo- quence, touched with imagination and instinct with grace and feeling. '^He had a large capacity for administration, clearness of vision, promptness in decision, and a thorough apprehen- sion of what constituted efficient organization. All the vast and varied work which he accomplished could not have been done unless he had had most exceptional nat- ural abilities, but behind them was the driving force of an intense energy and the ever-present belief that a man xW INTRODUCTION eould do what he willed to do. As he made himself an athlete, a horseman, a good shot, a bold explorer, so he made himself an exceptionally successful writer and speaker. Only a most abnormal energy would have en- abled him to enter and conquer in so many fields of in- tellectual achievement. But something more than energy and determination is needed for the largest success, espe- cially in the world ^s high places. The first requisite of leadership is abihty to lead, and that ability Theodore Roosevelt possessed in full measure. Whether in a game or in the hunting field, in a fight or in politics, he sought the front, where, as Webster once remarked, there is always plenty of room for those who can get there. His instinct was always to say ^come' rather than ^go,^ and he had the talent of command. ^^The criticism most commonly made upon Theodore Roosevelt was that he was impulsive and impetuous, that he acted without thinlving. He would have been the last to claim infallibihty. His head did not turn when fame came to him and choruses of admiration sounded in his ears, for he was neither vain nor credulous. He knew that he made mistakes, and never hesitated to admit them to be mistakes and to correct them or put them behind him wlien satisfied that they were such. But he wasted no tune in mourning, explaining, or vainly regretting them. It is also true that the middle way did not attract him. He was apt to go far, both in praise and censure, although nobody could analyze quahties and balance them justly in judging men better than he. He felt strongly, and as he had no concealments of any kind, he expressed himself in like manner. But vehemence is not violence nor is earnestness anger, which a very wise man defined as a INTRODUCTION xvii brief madness. It was all according to his nature, just as his eager cordiality in meeting men and women, his keen interest in other people^s cares or joys, was not assumed, as some persons thought who did not know him. It was all profoundly natural, it was all real, and in that way and in no other was he able to meet and greet his fellow men. "The feeling that he was impetuous and impulsive was also due to th^ fact that in a sudden, seemingly unex- pected crisis he would act with great rapidity. This hap- pened when he had been for weeks, perhaps for months, considering what he should do if such a crisis arose. He always believed that one of the most important ele- ments of success, whether in public or in private life, was to know what one meant to do under given circumstances. If he saw the possibility of perilous questions arising, it was his practice to think over carefully just how he would act under certain contingencies. Many of the contin- gencies never arose. Now and then a contingency became an actuality, and then he was ready. He knew what he meant to do, he acted at once, and some critics considered him impetuous, impulsive, and, therefore, dangerous, be- cause they did not know that he had thought the question all out beforehand. Very many people, powerful elements in the community, regarded him at one time as a dangerous radical, bent upon overthrowing all the safeguards of society and planning to tear out the foundations of an ordered liberty. As a matter of fact, what Theodore Roosevelt was trying to do was to strengthen American society and American government by demonstrating to the American people that he was aiming at a larger economic equality and a more generous industrial oppor- tunity for all men, and that any combination of capital or xviii INTRODUCTION of business, which threatened the control of the Govern- ment by the people who made it, was to be curbed and resisted, just as he would have resisted an enemy who tried to take possession of the city of Washington. He had no hostility to a man because he had been successful in business or because he had accumulated a fortune. If the man had been honestly successful and used his fortune wisely and beneficently, he w^as regarded by Theodore Roosevelt as a good citizen. The Aoilgar hatred of wealth found no place in his heart. He had but one standard, one test, and that was whether a man, rich or poor, was an honest man, a good citizen, and a good American. ^^All men admire courage, and that he possessed in the highest degree. But he had also something larger and rarer than courage, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. When an assassin shot him at Chicago he was severely wounded; how severely he could not tell, but it might well have been mortal. He went on to the great meeting awaiting him and there, bleeding, suffering, ignorant of his fate, but still unconquered, made his speech and went from the stage to the hospital. What bore him up was the dauntless spirit which could rise victorious over pain and darkness and the unknown and meet the duty of the hour as if all were well. A spirit like this awakens in all men more than admiration, it kindles affection and appeals to every generous impulse. "Very different, but equally compelling, was another quality. There is nothing in human beings at once so sane and so sjnupathetic 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 — INTRODUCTION xix and it never deserted him. Even at the most serious and even perilous moments if there was a gleam of humor any- where he saw it and rejoiced and helped himself with it over the rough places and in the dark hour. He loved fun, loved to joke and chaff, and, what is more uncommon, greatly enjoyed being chaffed himself. His ready smile and contagious laugh made countless friends and saved him from many an enmity. Even more generally effective than his humor, and yet allied to it, was the universal knowledge that Roosevelt had no secrets from the American people. ''Yet another quality — perhaps the most engaging of all — was his homely, generous humanity which enabled him to speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. ' He dwelt with the tribes of the marsh and moor, He sate at the board of kings; He tasted the toil of the burdened slave And the joy that triumph brings. But whether to jungle or palace hall Or white-walled tent he came, He was brother to king and soldier and slave, His welcome was the same.^ "He was very human and intensely American, and this knit a bond between him and the American people which nothing could ever break. And then he had yet one more attraction, not so impressive perhaps as the others, but none the less verj^ important and very captivating. He never by any chance bored the American people. They might laugh at him or laugh with him, they might like what he said or dishke it, they might agree with him or disagree with him, but they were never wearied of him and he never failed to interest them. He was never heavy, XX /iV TROD UCTION laborious, or dull. If he had made any effort to be always interesting and entertaining he would have failed and been tiresome. He was unfaiUngly attractive because he was always perfectly natural and his ovv-n unconscious self. And so all these things combined to give him his hold upon the American people, not only upon their minds but upon their hearts and their instincts, which nothing could ever weaken and which made him one of the most remarkable as he was one of the strongest characters that the history of popular government can show. He was also, and this is very revealing and explanatory, too, of his vast popular- ity, a man of ideals. He did not expose them daily on the roadside with language fluttering about them like the Thibetan who ties his shp of paper to the prayer wheel whirling in the wind. He kept his ideals to himself until the hour of fulfillment arrived. Some of them were the dreams of boyhood from which he never departed and which I have seen him carry out shyly and yet thoroughly and with intense personal satisfaction. ^^He had a touch of the knight errant in his daily life, al- though he would never have admitted it; but it was there. It was not visible in the medieval form of shining armor and dazzling tournaments but in the never-ceasing effort to help the poor and the oppressed, to defend and protect women and children, to right the wronged and succor the downtrodden. Passing by on the other side was not a mode of travel through life ever possible to him; and yet he was as far distant from the professional philanthropist as could well be imagined, for all he tried to do to help his fellow men he regarded as part of the day's work to be done and not talked about. No man ever prized senti- ment or hated sentimentality more than he. He preached INTRODUCTION xxi unceasingly the familiar morals which lie at the bottom of both family and public life. The blood of some ancestral Scotch covenanter or of some Dutch reformed preacher facing the tyranny of Philip of Spain was in his veins, and with his large opportunities and his vast audiences he was always ready to appeal for justice and righteousness. But his own particular ideals he never attempted to thrust upon the world until the day came w^hen they were to be translated into reahties of action. "When the future historian traces Theodore Roosevelt's extraordinary career he will find these embodied ideals planted like milestones along the road over which he marched. The^^ never left him. His ideal of public service was to be found in his life, and as his life drew^ to its close he had to meet his ideal of sacrifice face to face. All his sons went from him to the war and one was killed upon the field of honor. Of all the ideals that lift men up, the hard- est to fulfill is the ideal of sacrifice. Theodore Roosevelt met it as he had all others and fulfilled it to the last jot of its terrible demands. His country asked the sacrifice and he gave it with solemn pride and uncomplaining lips. "This is not the place to speak of his private life, but within that sacred circle no man was ever more blessed in the utter devotion of a noble wife and the passionate love of his children. The absolute purity and beauty of his family fife tell us why the pride and interest which his fellow countrymen felt in him were always touched with the warm fight of love. In the home so dear to him, in his sleep, death came, and — *^So Valiant-for-Truth passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.'' xxii INTRODUCTION Roosevelt as a Writer Of the many sides to Roosevelt's activity, this volume aims to present merely one — his literary work. It has been well said of him that if he had any profession in private life it was that of literature. His fondness for writing began even in college and continued until his death. He enjoyed his literary work thoroughly and always hoped that it would take a larger part in his life than other duties usually permitted. But these other matters were so pressing that Roosevelt could seldom give to his writing more than his spare time. Nevertheless he was able in the midst of manifold duties to accomplish a great deal. An illustration in point is the way in which he wrote his account of the Rough Riders. Upon his return from Cuba in the summer of 1898, Roosevelt engaged to write an account of the part his regiment had taken in the Spanish- American War. The story was to appear first in Scribner^s Magazine, and later to be published as a book. A few weeks after agreeing to write the account, he began his vigorous campaign for the Governorship of New York, but neither the campaign nor duties after he took office pre- vented him from delivering the monthly instalments on schedule time. Of almost every one of his books it might be said that it was written in the spare moments of his busy life as a relaxation from public duties. This cir- cumstance gives force to the remark of John Morley, the English statesman and author, that ^^ Roosevelt was a man of letters temporarily assigned to other duty.'' In a survey of Roosevelt's literary achievement, the first impressive feature is its quantity. When Roosevelt's INTRODUCTION xxiii many other activities are taken into consideration, the quantity of his work becomes more significant. The Hst of his books on page xxxv shows over thirty titles — an accompHshment which in the case of a man giving un- divided attention to writing would be remarkable as an output for a period of about forty years. And when to these books, his major productions, are added the scores of speeches, state papers, magazine articles and newspaper editorials, which as yet are largely uncollected into book form, his work becomes more impressive even when con- sidered merely in respect to quantity. But a still more striking feature of his literary work is its range. Few writers have equalled Roosevelt in the production of works so varied in kind. He wrote his- tory — The Naval War of 1812^ The Winning of the West, A History of New York. He WTote biography — lives of Benton, Morris, and Oliver Cromwell. He described in books of travel and adventure his hunting and exploring trips in the Rocky Mountains, in Africa, and in South America. His more important magazine articles and speeches dealing with problems of government and citizen- ship were collected into volumes such as American I deals , The Strenuous Life, and History as Literature. He wrote also much on natural history — The Deer Family in America and Life History of African Game Animals, being notable books in this field. In addition to all these different types of books, mention must be made of his autobiography, his lectures, his orations, his state papers, and his editorials. With all their extent and variety, Roosevelt^s writings would not deserve attention unless they were solid and important contributions in their several fields. That most of them have permanent value of this kind seems to be the xxiv INTRODUCTION verdict of those competent to judge. In particular is this true of his work in history and the kindred field of biog- raphy. Of his several books in this field, the four volumes of The Winning of the West, — a brilliant and accurate ac- count of the deeds of the frontiersmen in Kentucky, Ten- nessee, and the Old Northwest, covering the closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening ones of the nine- teenth, are alone sufficient to establish Roosevelt's position as an historian. This book deservedly ranks with the best historical writings that America has produced. Roosevelt's books of travel and adventure also possess unquestioned value. Those relating to his experiences in the Far West contain unique pictures of the vanished frontier life, this being especiall}^ true of the volume Ranch Life and Hunting Trail. The books treating of his African and his South American trips contain not only interesting adventures but also valuable scientific information. Upon this point, Sir H. H. Johnston, an English ex- plorer and authority on Africa whose opinion is entirely unprejudiced, says mth reference especially to African Game Trails, ^'We should like to see Mr. Roosevelt's book take its place in the ranks of Bates's Naturalist in the Amazons, Schilhngs' With Flash Light and Rifle, and works of that character. He is a good zoologist ar\d a peculiarly accurate and discriminating observer. Although he has traversed lands visited by some of the greatest naturalist explorers of the world, he has still made discoveries him- self, or through others, and records a great many facts not hitherto knowTi about the life history of beasts and birds in Equatorial East Africa." A similar statement could be made regarding the interest and scientific value of his later book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, INTRODUCTION xxv The above quotation suggests the standing which Roosevelt^s observations on the habits of mammals and birds have among naturahsts. Most of his writing in this field was done incidentally to his accounts of his hunting trips. There is comparatively httle of this material in his earlier writings, such as Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, The Wilderness Hunter , but there is more and more of it in the later books, such as Out Door Pastimes of an American Hunter, African Game Trails and Through the Brazilian Wilderness. Roosevelt v/as regretful that he did not devote more space in these first books to natural history. ^^I vaguely supposed/^ he said in later life, ^Hhat the obvious facts on the habits of the animals were known and let most of my opportunities pass by.^^ Books especially devoted to this subject, such as The Deer Family in America, and Life Histories of African Game Animals, contain important contributions to natural history and show that Roosevelt possessed the qualifica- tions of a naturalist, — keenness of observation, clearness of mind, accuracy in deduction, and absolute regard for truth. Roosevelt was, of course, not a scientist or a biologist in the narrower sense of the term. He cared nothing for the so-called ^'closef study of natural history, ' but made his interest the study of the living animal in its habitat. As John Burroughs says of him, ^^He was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life.^^ One result at least of Roosevelt^s natural history writings has been to remind his country- men of the spirit of love, of zeal, and of intelhgence with which they should approach nature in any of its wonderful aspects. xxvi INTRODUCTION When we turn to that section of Roosevelt's writings containing his addresses, essays, state papers, and mis- cellaneous writings, we come to the part of his work which has the least merit in a literary sense. Nevertheless these productions constitute a body of political idealism which the future will not overlook, the underlying ideas of which have been w^ell summarized by Mr. Harold Howland as follows: ^^ First he believed in a sternly moral standard of conduct. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It does not make wrong right to say that it is done in defense of prop- erty, on the one hand, or, on the other, done in behalf of the people. . . . Secondl3% he believed in democracy. He believed in it, not in any theoretical, doctrinaire fashion, but with peculiar concreteness and directness. . . . Thirdly, he laid a compelling emphasis upon the respon- sibility of the individual citizen as the primary condition of national progress. . . . Lasth^, he held to the golden middle course, not tepidly or timoroush^, but with the zeal and the conviction of a crusader. He was a middle- of-the-road man, not because he was unwilling or afraid to commit himself to the position on either side, but he found the way to truth to lie midway between the two extremes. He was a zealot and a fighter for the truth, justice and righteousness. He found no monopoly of any one of these precious possessions in the camp of the ex- tremists on either side. . . . This was the fourfold struc- ture of his creed: righteousness, democrac}^, individual character, and the true balance between opposing forces.'' 1 Against the underlying ideas in Roosevelt's speeches ' ''Theodore Roosevelt and his Times," Independent, Jan- uary 19, 1919. INTRODUCTION xxvii and essays the charge of commonplaceness has sometimes been brought. The truth of the charge may be admitted, but it must be added that it was no ordinary and dull use of the commonplace. With Roosevelt the ordinary took on the air of extreme novelty because he imparted to it energy and passion. In regard to his ability to do this, it has been said, '^He did not content himself with a bare statement that children ought to love their fathers and mothers. In his hands the obvious became a flaming sword. He would wave it vehemently above his head and defy the world to deny that crime ought to be punished and virtue rewarded. Such zest and joy did he put into his vigorous enunciations of what all sane men agree to be true, that he somehow appeared, even when uttering platitudes, a great moral and political discoverer.'^ Such ability to vivify frdinary routine thoughts and sentiments connotes high mental talents and a rush of soul of a kind to which not inaptly might be applied the term genius. Cer- tainly many of the world's writers who have been most in- fluential with the mass of mankind have had a gift of this kind, and it ought not be derogatory to Roosevelt's work that he was successful in this way. Another charge brought sometimes against Roosevelt's work is its redundancy. It is asserted that he was al- ways reiterating the same ideas, and it is easy to per- ceive that especially in his speeches, Roosevelt nearly always boxed the compass of his favorite ideas. This makes much reading in the speeches tedious, but in apology it may be said that it was the method best adapted to the purpose of Roosevelt. He clearly felt himself to be a teacher to his generation, and he used, as all similar leaders have done, the teacher's method of line upon line and xxviii INTRODUCTION precept upon precept. Wearisome though the method may be, yet this drawback must be overlooked in the hght of the results. As Colquhoun, an English student of Rooseveit^s life and work remarks, ^^But what Roosevelt has accomplished in awakening a public conscience, and when we remember that this was primarily one of his aims, we can forgive the redundancy of some of his public utter- ances. There is no better way to make truth believed by the masses than that suggested by Lewis Carroll: ^He said it very loud and clear; he went and shouted it in my ear.' Roosevelt's success as a propagandist has been due to his saying things very loud and clear.'' From this mass of speeches and articles Roosevelt him- self has selected what he cared to preserve in book form, and has included it in the three volumes, American I deals j The Strenuous Life, and History as Literature. Of these books, American Ideals is in large measure the repository of many of Roosevelt's favorite pohtical ideas. The Strenuous Life deals with ideals of conduct and citizen- ship in a larger and more general wa}^ History as Litera- ture is more significant than the other two books. While it presents also ideals of citizenship, it has a wider range embracing especially comments on books and writers of such searching character as to give force to the remark someone made in connection with Roosevelt, ^^We have half or more than half a suspicion that an admirable literary critic was lost to the world when Mr. Roosevelt became a public character." We have seen how in the diverse fields of history, ad- venture, natural science, and pohtical discussion, Roose- velt has left solid and substantial contributions. But this sketch must not close without reference to another book INTRODUCTION xxix which is in some respects the most important single volume he produced. This is his autobiography entitled Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography. Written a few years after Roosevelt had returned to private life, the book was too close in time to the excitement of the writer's political career, and accordingly it is in large measure a justification of measures and policies. Nevertheless it will continue to attract readers not only because of its value as a record of a very significant political period from the pen of the one who was the leader in it, but also be- cause of the intimate and attractive revelation of the man Roosevelt. Herein are clearly exhibited his different interests. Herein are uncovered the characteristics of his mind and spirit. As Brander Matthews has remarked, ''It is a ver^^ human personality that is so disclosed; very en- gaging and very energetic; tingling with vitality, endowed with the zest of life and the gusto of living; not unduly self-conscious; interested in himself, no doubt, like the rest of us, but scarcely more than he is interested in many others; possessed of abundant humor and good humor; able to take a joke even when it is against him- self; and enriched with an unsurpassed gift for friend- ahip.^' It seems possible that the Autobiography will as time goes on be ranked with that of Franklin. These two hap- pened to be the most interesting Americans of their genera- tions, the one at the close of the eighteenth century, the other at the close of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth. It must, however, be borne in mind that the conditions of composition of the two autobiographies were different. Franklin in his old age wrote out his recol- XXX INTRODUCTION lections, not for general publications, but for his children. Roosevelt in the midst of his career wrote his memoir largely to justify his poHtical actions. Possibly in this difference may be found the cause why Franklin's sketch of himself will exceed Roosevelt's in general interest, but if the latter were freed from the weight of the explanations of political matters and left with merely the passages of more direct autobiographical interest, it might rival Franklin's book in popularity. Even as it is, the Autobiography drew from an American critic. Professor W. P. Trent, the statement that it belonged ^Ho the very small group of books — witness Dr. Johnson — which a reasonable man could wish longer.'^ Roosevelt's Style Because Roosevelt wrote so much and that usually uhder the most unfavorable circumstances, there is the inpression in the minds of many that he dashed off his work with httle or no effort. Nothing, however, is farther from the truth. Roosevelt was painstaking and con- scientious in his WTiting not alone in those things he wrote with a feeling of their importance as literature but even in those he wrote in more or less of a routine way. When he was doing editorial work for The Outlook, he did articles with great care although knowing that in most instances they were ephemeral in their appeal. ^^No one knows how much time I put into my articles for The Outlookj^ he once said to a friend. Then, pulHng a manuscript from his pocket, he continued, ^^Here is an article that I am going over, as' I have opportunity, correcting and recasting it." Father Zahm who accompanied Roosevelt on the INTRODUCTION xxxi South African trip and who had opportunity to see his methods of work in writing in the field for magazine pub- Hcation the account of that trip, gives testimony of the same sort. '^Colonel Roosevelt/^ he says ^^did not by any means write as rapidly as is generally supposed. He was too careful a literary craftsman for that. Nor had he the facility sometimes credited to him. He put into his magazine work far more thought and labor than is usually imagined. After an article was written, he revised it care- fully, correcting, changing, amplifying and excising until certain of the pages were scarcely decipherable.^^ ^ This carefulness in expression extended also to his speeches, especially in the case of the more important. Mr. D. W. Lewis gives in his Life of Theodore Roosevelt an instance of this thorough preparation in the case of the important Carnegie Hall address deUvered in New York City, March 20th 1912. Mr. Lewis and another friend had been invited to Oyster Bay for a conference over thejnatter. Says Mr. Lewis, '^We found that the speech was already in manuscript form. I think the copy we used was the second or third revision. At any rate, the Colonel himself had already made numerous corrections in pencil.'^ Roosevelt was ready to accept criticism and take suggestions, — in fact almost too ready to do so, thinks Mr. Lewis. '^He read the typewritten sheets aloud,'' continues Mr. Lewis, ^^not minding in the least if one or the other of us interrupted him before he had completed a single sentence. When some time after twelve o'clock, we had apparently reached the end, he said: ^I shall have to sit up and go over this again tonight.'" Further interesting insight into Roosevelt's methods of 1 Roosevelt as a Hunter-Naturalist. Outlook, 121: 438. xxxii INTRODUCTION composition is given in a vivid account by Mr. F. E. Leupp.^ ^^Most of his original composing is done on feet, pacing up and down the room and dictating to a stenog- rapher. He does not even see how his periods hang to- gether till they have been reduced to typewritten form and the sheets laid upon his desk. Then, when an interval of reduced tension comes, his eye falls upon the manuscript and lingers there. . . . His left hand lifts the top sheet while the right gropes for a pen, and in a moment the author is quite buried in his work, annotating between the lines as he reads. ^'The friend who is with him probably respects his mood and subsides into a sofa-corner, or warms his hands before the fire, or amuses himself at the window till the first force of absorption has spent itseK and Mr. Roosevelt hfts his head to remark, ^Now, here is where I beUeve I have made a point never before brought out,' and proceeds to read aloud a passage and descant upon it. If this impromptu enlargement transcends certain bounds, the speaker is on his feet again in an instant and pacing the floor as he talks. Sentence follows sentence from his lips like shots from the muzzle of a magazine-gun — all well-timed and well-aimed in spite of their swiftness of utterance. The chances are that one of them will recoil to impress its author afresh with its aptness, and back he will slide into the vacant chair to put that idea into visible form with his pen and wedge it in between two others. '^ Roosevelt's methods of composing help us to under- stand certain features of his style. In general it is clear rather than elegant, and like the man himseK, charac- terized by force and emphatic power rather than by 1 The Man Roosevelt, Chapter XVII. INTRODUCTION xxxiii polish and rhetorical refinement. The oral method of composition that has been mentioned is perhaps responsi- ble for two of its noticeable defects, — looseness of struc- ture and frequent repetition. A third defect, — extrava- gance of statement, is probably temperamental. To quote again from Mr. Leupp, ^^Mr. Roosevelt fairl}^ lives in an atmosphere of superlatives. He will speak of a ^perfectly good man with a perfectly honest motive,^ where all he intends to say is that the man is well-meaning. He is ^delighted' where most of us are pleased. The latest visitor is ^ just the very man I wanted to see,' and ^nothing I have heard in a long time has interested me so much/ is the passing bit of information. A fourth defect, en- countered occasionally, is some slight grammatical lapse — a too great use, perhaps, of the split infinitive, an ambigu- ous use of pronouns or participles, or some other careless- ness in sjmtactical matters. These, however, are simply evidences that Roosevelt rated the expressiveness of language above its correctness, and he would have been ready to take refuge behind the words of Thomas Jeffer- son, ^Whenever by small grammatical neghgence the energy of an idea can be condensed or a word be made to stand for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in con- tempt,' or the remark of Henry Ward Beecher to the person who was speaking of grammatical faults in one of Beecher's sermons, ^ Young man, when the English lan- guage gets in my way it doesn't stand a chance.'" But what stamps any writer as great is not freedom from faults but abundance of powers. Roosevelt's stjde has its positive excellencies. Foremost of all, it possesses the quality of energy and vividness. He always shows the artist's eye for the concrete and picturesque, and avails xxxiv INTRODUCTION himself of this gift not only in his narrative writings but as well in his essays and speeches. At times the reader be- comes conscious of a great pent-up force of feeling and en- thusiasm expressing itself in some striking and eloquent passage such as those which may be found in several of the selections in this book. He had also the gift of terse, epigrammatic expression which gave currency to many of his expressions in a widespread degree that was most remarkable. Sometimes he would dredge up from the past a word or phrase and give it modern use. An instance is the expression ^^ muck-raking.^^ This was as old as Pilgrim'' s Progress, but it was Roosevelt\s use of the word that put it into everybody's vocabulary. More frequently the words or phrases were of his own coinage. '^Male- factors of great wealth/' 'Hhe big stick/' and '^ weasel words" are a few samples of the dozens of such expressions that might be given. A fitting close to these remarks on Roosevelt's style is the comment made by Professor Trent of the EngUsh de- partment of Columbia University in a review of The Winning of the West: ^^ When he is at his best, Mr. Roose- velt writes as well as any man need desire to write, who is not aiming at that elusive glory of being considered a master of style. The truth of this statement will be plain to any one who will take the trouble to analyze the im- pression made by a rapid reading of the chapter describ- ing the fight at King's Mountain. The effect can be summed up in a brief sentence — You are at the battle. Surely this is a better test of the quality of a man's style than can ever be furnished by minute rhetorical analysis, which would, I suspect, convict Mr. Roosevelt of offences at which a pedant would shake his head." INTRODUCTION xxxv Bibliography ROOSEVELTS BOOKS The Naval War of 1812 (1882) . Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885). Life of Thomas Hart Benton (1887). The Wilderness Hunter (1887). Life of Gouverneur Morris (1888). Ranch Life and Hunting Trail (1888). Essays on Practical Politics (1888). The Winning of the West, 4 vols. (1889-1896). New York City. A History (1891). American Big Game Hunting (with George Bird Grinnell) (1893). Claws and Antlers of the Rocky Mountains (1894). Hero Tales from American History (with Henry Cabot Lodge) (1895). Hunting in Many Lands (with George Bird Grinnell) (1895). American Ideals (1897, enlarged 1907). The Rough Riders (1898). The Strenuous Life (1900). Oliver Cromwell (1901). Addresses and Presidential Messages (1904). The Beer Family (1902). Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (1906). Good Hunting (1907). African Game Trails (1910). Realizable Ideals (1912). Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood (1912). History as Literature (1913). xxxvi INTRODUCTION Theodore Roosevelt^ An Autobiography (1913). Life Histories of African Game Animals y 2 vols. (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 Oivn Part (1916). The Great Adventure (1917). Theodore RooseveWs Letters to his Children (edited by J. B. Bishop) (1919). BIOGRAPHIES OF ROOSEVELT Douglas, G. W., The Many-Sided Roosevelt. Hagedorn, H., Boy's Life of Roosevelt. Iglehart, F. C, Theodore Roosevelt: The Alan as I Knew Him. Leupp, F. E., The Man Roosevelt. Morgan, J., Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man. Lewis, W. D., The Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Riis, J. A., Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen. Street, J. L., The Most Interesting American, Thayer, W. R., Theodore Roosevelt. Thwing, E., Theodore Roosevelt. Washburn, C. G., Theodore Roosevelt, the Logic of his Career. MAGAZINE ARTICLES RELATING TO ROOSEVELT The following selections from the magazine writing about Roosevelt give interesting details about various aspects of his career: IN TROD UCTION xxxvii The Man *' Roosevelt — A Character Sketch'^ (Julian Ralph), Review of Reviews^ Vol. 12, page 159. '^ Estimate of Roosevelf (G. Horton), Reader , Vol. 4, page 19. ^^ Keynote of Roosevelt's Character '' (B. Oilman), Review of Reviews y Vol. 46, page 303. *' Characterization of Roosevelt's Personal Qualities" (Mark Sullivan), Collier's Weekly, Vol. 42, page 21. '^Theodore Roosevelt'^ (A. R. Colquhoun), Fortnightly Review, Vol. 93, page 832. V "The Personahty of Roosevelt" (W. G. Brown), Inde- 'pendent, Vol. 55, page 1547. ''Roosevelt in Retrospect" (M. F. Egan), Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 123, page 676. ''Theodore Roosevelt" (C. G. Washburn), Harvard Grad- uate's Magazine, Vol. 27, page 451. "My Neighbor, Theodore Roosevelt" (H. Garland), Everybody's Magazine, Vol. 41, page 9. The Politician "Roosevelt as a Practical Politician" (Brander Mat- thews), Outlook, Vol. 122, page 433. "Roosevelt, A Force for Righteousness" (W. A. White), McC lure's Magazine, Vol. 28, page 386. "President Roosevelt" (H. T. Peck), Bookman, Vol. 23, page 300. "Theodore Roosevelt and his Times Shown in his Own Letters" (J. B. Bishop), Scribner's Magazine, Vol. 66, pages 257, 385, 515, 650. xxxviii IN TROD UCTION ''High Lights of Roosevelt^s Two Administrations" (Anon.), Century, Vol. 77, page 954. ^^ Roosevelt the PoKtician'^ (F. E. Leupp), Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 109, page 843. '^ Theodore Roosevelt and His Times" (H. H. Howland), Independent, Vol. 97, page 83. '^Roosevelt and the National Psychology" (Stuart P. Sherman), Nation, Vol. 109, page 599. The Out-of-Doors Man '^Roosevelt — Cowboy and Ranchman" (W. T. Dantz), Harper's Weekly, Vol. 48, page 1212. ''Roosevelt as an Outdoor Man" (H. B. Needham), Mc- Clure's Magazine, Vol. 36, page 231. ''Roosevelt the Athlete" (A. Day), Putnam's Magazine, Vol. 4, page 659. "Roosevelt the Greatest Outdoor Man" (A. K. Will- young), Outing, Vol. 74, pages 273, 355; Vol. 75, page 21. "Roosevelt the Husbandman" (H. J. Forman), Review of Reviews, Vol. 42, page 173. "Roosevelt as a Volunteer Soldier" (H. E. Armstrong), Independent, Vol. 53, page 2277. The Naturalist "Colonel Roosevelt as an Explorer" (V. Stepansson), Review of Reviews, Vol. 59, page 165. "Theodore Roosevelt as a Hunter Naturalist" (Father Zahm), Outlook, Vol. 121, page 434. "The Wilderness Hunter" (Anon.), Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 75, page 286. INTRODUCTION xxxix *' Camping with Roosevelf (John Burroughs), Atlantic Monthly J Vol. 97, page 585. '^ Roosevelt as Nature-lover and Observer'^ (John Bur- roughs), Outlook, Vol. 86, page 547. "Roosevelt as an Explorer'' (Anon.), LittelVs Living Age, Vol. 282, page 189. '^Theodore Roosevelt as a Naturalist'' (H. H. Johnston), LittelVs Living Age, Vol. 281, page 373. ''Roosevelt's Visit to South America" (Father Zahm), Review of Reviews, Vol. 50, page 81. The Writer ''Man of Letters in the White House" (J. B. Gilder), Critic, Vol. 39, page 401. "Roosevelt as a Man of Letters" (H. A. Beers), Yale Review, Vol. 8, page 694. "Writings of Roosevelt" (G. R. Johnston), Book Buyer, Vol. 18, page 5. "Roosevelt as a Journalist" (Lyman Abbott), Outlook, Vol. 107, page 642. "Mr. Roosevelt as a Letter Writer" (J. B. Gilder), BelU man, Vol. 26, page 103. "Roosevelt as a Historian" (W. P. Trent), Forum, Vol. 21, page 566. "Roosevelt as a Reader" (Anon.), Century Magazine, Vol. 69, page 951. ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS EOOSEVELT^S WRITINGS AUTOBIOGRAPHY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH ^ On October 27, 1858, I was born at No. 28 East Twen- tieth Street, New York City, in the house in which we Uved during the time that my two sisters and my brother and I were small children. It was furnished in the canon- ical taste of the New York which George William Curtis° 5 described in the ^^Potiphar Papers. '^ The black hair- cloth furniture in the dining-room scratched the bare legs of the children when they sat on it. The middle room was a library, with tables, chairs, and bookcases of gloomy respectability. It was without windows, and so lo was available only at night. The front room, the parlor, seemed to us children to be a room of much splendor, but was open for general use only on Sunday evening or on rare occasions when there were parties. The Sunday evening family gathering was the redeeming feature in a is day which otherwise we children did not enjoy — chiefly because we were all of us made to wear clean clothes and keep neat. The ornaments of that parlor I remember now, including the gas chandeUer decorated with a great quan- ^ This and the succeeding autobiographical selections are reprinted from Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, by permission of Mrs. Roosevelt and the holder of the copyright, the Macmillan Company. 1 2 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS tity of cut-glass prisms. These prisms struck me as possess- ing peculiar magnificence. One of them fell off one day, and I hastily grabbed it and stowed it away, passing several days of furtive delight in the treasure, a delight always 5 alloyed with fear that I would be found out and con- victed of larceny. There was a Swiss wood-carving rep- resenting a very big hunter on one side of an exceedingly small mountain, and a herd of chamois, disproportion- ately small for the hunter and large for the mountain, 10 just across the ridge. This always fascinated us; but there was a small chamois kid for which we felt agonies lest the hunter might come on it and kill it. There was also a Russian moujik ° drawing a gilt sledge on a piece of malachite. ° Some one mentioned in my hearing that 15 malachite was a valuable marble. This fixed in my mind that it was valuable exactly as diamonds are valuable. I accepted that moujik as a priceless work of art, and it was not until I was well in middle age that it occurred to me that I w^as mistaken. 20 The sumtmers we spent in the country, now at one place now at another. We children of course loved the country beyond anything. We disliked the city. We were always wildly eager to get to the country when spring came, and very sad when in the late fall the family moved back to 25 towm. In the country we of course had all kinds of pets — • cats, dogs, rabbits, a coon, and a sorrel Shetland pony named General Grant. When my younger sister first heard of the real General Grant,° by the way, she was much struck by the coincidence that some one should 30 have given him the same name as the pony. (Thirty 3^ears later my own children had their pony Grant.) In the country we children ran barefoot much of the time, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 3 and the seasons went by in a round of uninterrupted and enthralling pleasures — supervising the haying and har- vesting, picking apples, hunting frogs successfully and woodchucks unsuccessfully, gathering hickory-nuts and chestnuts for sale to patient parents, building wigwams 5 in the woods, and sometimes playing Indians in too real- istic manner by staining ourselves (and incidentally our clothes) in Uberal fashion with poke-cherry juice. Thanks- giving was an appreciated festival, but it in no way came up to Christmas. Christmas was an occasion of literally lo dehrious joy. In the evening we hung up our stockings — or rather the biggest stockings we could borrow from the grown-ups — and before dawn we trooped in to open them while sitting on father's and mother's bed; and the bigger presents were arranged, those for each child on its own 15 table, in the drawing-room, the doors to which were thrown open after breakfast. I never knew any one else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly for my own children. ' 20 My father, Theodore Roosevelt, ° was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gen- tleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he made 25 us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great love and patience, and the most understanding sym- pathy and consideration, he combined insistence on so discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid. 4 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him. We used to wait in the evening until we could hear his key rattling in the latch of the front hall, and then rush out to greet him; and we 5 would troop into his room while he was dressing, to stay there as long as we were permitted, eagerly examining anything which came out of his pockets which could be regarded as an attractive novelty. Every child has fixed in his memory various details which strike it as of grave 10 importance. The trinkets he used to keep in a little box on his dressing-table we children always used to speak of as ^ treasures. ^^ The word, and some of the trinkets them- selves, passed on to the next generation. My own children, when small, used to troop into my room while I was dress- is ing, and the gradually accumulating trinkets in the '' ditty- box '^ — the gift of an enlisted man in the navy — always excited rapturous joy. On occasions of solemn festivity each child would receive a trinket for his or her ^^very own.'' My own children, when very small, by the way, 20 enjoyed one pleasure I do not remember enjoying myself. When I came back from riding, the child who brought the bootjack would itself promptly get into the boots, and clump up and down the room with a delightful feeling of kinship with Jack of the seven-league strides. 25 The punishing incident I have referred to happened when I was four years old. I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not remember biting her arm, but I do remember run- ning down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had com- mitted a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, 30 got some dough from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute or two my father entered from the yard and asked where I was. The warm-hearted BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 5 Irish cook had a characteristic contempt for '^nformers/^ but although she said nothing she compromised between informing and her conscience by casting a look under the table. My father immediately darted for me under the table. I feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having the 5 advantage of him because I could stand up under the table, got a fair start for the stairs, but v/as caught halfway up them. The punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope — and believe — that it did me good. 10 My mother, Martha Bulloch, ° was a sweet, gracious, beautiful Southern woman, a delightful companion and be- loved by everybody. She was entirely '^unreconstructed '^ ° to the day of her death. Her mother, my grandmother, one of the dearest of old ladies, lived with us, and was dis- 15 tinctly over-indulgent to us children, being quite unable to harden her heart towards us even when the occasion demanded it. Towards the close of the Civil War, although a very small boy, I grew to have a partial but alert under- standing of the fact that the family were not one in their 20 views about that conflict, my father being a strong Lincoln Republican; and once, when I felt that I had been wronged by maternal discipline during the day, I attempted a par- tial vengeance by praying with loud fervor for the success of the Union arms, when we all came to say our prayers 2S before my mother in the evening. She was not only a most devoted mother, but was also blessed with a strong sense of humor, and she was too much amused to punish me; but I was warned not to repeat the offense, under penalty of my father's being informed — he being the dispenser of 30 serious punishment . Morning prayers were with my father. We used to stand at the foot of the stairs, and when father 6 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS came down we called out, ''I speak for you and the cubby- hole too!'^ There were three of us young children, and we used to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning prayers. The place between father and the arm 5 of the sofa we called the ^^ cubby-hole/^ The child who got that place we regarded as especially favored both in comfort and somehow or other in rank and title. The two who were left to sit on the much wider expanse of sofa on the other side of father were outsiders for the time being. 10 My Aunt Anna, my mother's sister, lived Avith us. She was as devoted to us children as was my mother herself, and we were equally devoted to her in return. She taught us our lessons while we were little. She and my mother used to entertain us by the hour with tales of life on the 15 Georgia plantations; of hunting fox, deer, and wildcat; of the long-tailed driving horses, Boone and Crockett,^ and of the riding horses, one of which was named Buena Vista° in a fit of patriotic exaltation during the Mexican War; and of the queer goings on in the Negi'o quarters. 20 She knew all the ^^Br'er Rabbit'' ° stories, and I was brought up on them. One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck with them, and took them down from her dictation, pubhshing them in ^ ^ Harper's "° where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a genius^ 25 arose who in ^' Uncle Remus" made the stories immortal. I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe. One of my memories is of 30 my father walking up and down the room with me in his arms at night when I was a very small person, and of sit- ting up in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying BOYHOOD AND YOUTH ' ?>^ to help me. I went very little to school. I never w^nt to the public schools, as my own children later did,/both at the ^* Cove school^' at Oyster Bay and at the ^^ Rwd school'' in Washington. For a few months I attended Professor McMullen's school in Twentieth Street near the houses where I was born, but most of the time I had tutors. As I have already said, my aunt taught me when I was small. At one time we had a French governess, a loved and valued "mam'selle,'' in the household. 10 While still a small boy I began to take interest in natural history.^ I remember distinctly the first day that I started on my career as zoologist. I was walking up Broadway, and as I passed the market to which I used sometimes to be sent before breakfast to get strawberries I suddenly 15 saw a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood. That seal filled me with every possible feehng of romance and adventure. I asked where it was killed, and was informed in the harbor. I had already begun to read some of Mayne Reid's books ® and other boys' books of adventure, and I felt that this 20 seal brought all these adventures in realistic fashion be- fore me. As long as that seal remained there I haunted the neighborhood of the market day after day. I measured it, and I recall that, not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its girth with a folding pocket 25 foot-rule, a difficult undertaking. 1 carefully made a record of the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal. This, and subsequent natural histories, were written down in blank books in simphfied 30 spelHng wholly unpremeditated and unscientific. I had vague aspirations of in some way or another owning and 8 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS preserving that seal, but they never got beyond the purely formless stage. I think, however, I did get the seaFs skull, and with two of my cousins promptly started what we ambitiously called the '^Roosevelt Museum of Na- 5 tural History/' The collections were at first kept in my room, until a rebellion on the part of the chambermaid received the approval of the higher authorities of the household and the collection was moved up to a kind of bookcase in the back hall upstairs. It was the ordinary 10 small boy's collection of curios, quite incongruous and entirely valueless except from the standpoint of the boy himself. My father and mother encouraged me warmly in this, as they always did in anything that would give me wholesome pleasure or help to develop me. 15 The adventure of the seal and the novels of Mayne Reid together strengthened my instinctive interest in natural history. I was too young to understand much of Mayne Reid, excepting the adventure part and the natural history part — these enthralled me. But of 20 course my reading was not wholly confined to natural history. There was very little effort made to compel me to read books, my mother and father having the good sense not to try to get me to read anything I did not like, unless it was in the way of study. I was given 25 the chance to read books that they thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given some other good book that I did like. Quite unknown to myself, I was, while a boy, under 30 a hopeless disadvantage in studying nature. I was very near-sighted, so that the only things I could study were those I ran against or stumbled over. When I was about BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 9 thirteen I was allowed to take lessons in taxidermy from a Mr. Bell, a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired old gentle- man, as straight as an Indian, who had been a companion of Audubon's. ° He had a musty little shop, somewhat on the order of Mr. Venus's shop° in ^^Our Mutual Friend,^' a 5 little shop in which he had done very valuable work for science. This ^'vocational study, '^ as I suppose it would be called by modern educators, spurred and directed my interest in collecting specimens for mounting and pres- ervation. It was this summer that I got m^y first gun, lo and it puzzled me to find that my companions seemed to see things to shoot at which I could not see at all. One day they read aloud an advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I then realized that something was the matter, for not only was I unable to read the sign is but I could not even see the letters. I spoke of this to my father, and soon afterwards got my first pair of spectacles, which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a clumsy and awkward 20 little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and awkward- ness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing. The recollection of this experience gives me a keen sjmipathy with those 25 who are trying in our public schools and elsewhere to remove the physical causes of deficiency in children, who are often unjustly blamed for being obstinate or unam- bitious, or mentally stupid. This same summer, too, I obtained various new books 30 on mammals and birds, including the publications of Spencer Baird°, for instance, and made an industrious book- 10 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS study of the subject. I did not accomplish much in out- door study because I did not get spectacles until late in the fall, a short time before I started with the rest of the family for a second trip to Europe. ° We were living at sDobbs Ferry, on the Hudson. My gun was a breech- loading, pin-fire double-barrel, of French manufacture. It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent-minded boy. There was no spring to open it, and if the mechan- ism became rusty it could be opened with a brick with- 10 out serious damage. When the cartridges stuck they could be removed in the same fashion. If they were loaded, however, the result was not always happ3^, and I tattooed myself with partially unburned grains of powder more than once. 15 In the fall of 1876 I entered Harvard, ° graduating in 1880. I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard, and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general effect, for there was ver}' little in my actual studies which helped me in after 20 life. More than one of my own sons have alread}^ prof- ited by their friendship with certain of their masters in school or college. I certainly profited b}^ my friendship with one of my tutors, ]Mr. Cutler; ° and in Harvard I owed much to the professor of English, ]\Ir. A. S. Hill.° Doubt- 25 less through my own fault, I saw almost nothing of Pres- ident Eliot ° and very little of the professors. I ought to have gained much more than I did gain from writing the themes and forensics.° INIy failure to do so may have been partly due to my taking no interest in the subjects. 30 Before I left Harvard I was already writing one or two chapters of a book I afterwards published on the Naval War of 1812. Those chapters were so dry that they would BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 11 have made a dictionary seem light reading by comparison. Still, they represented purpose and serious interest on my part, not the perfunctory effort to do well enough to get a certain mark; and corrections of them by a skilled older man than myself would have impressed me and haves commanded my respectful attention. But I was not sufficiently developed to make myself take an intelligent interest in some of the subjects assigned me — the character of the Gracchi,° for instance. A very clever and studious lad would no doubt have done so, but I personally did not lo grow up to this particular subject until a good many years later. The frigate and sloop actions between the Amer- ican and British sea-tigers of 1812 were much more within my grasp. I worked drearily at the Gracchi because I had to; my conscientious and much-to-be-pitied professor 15 dragging me through the theme by main strength, with my feet firmly planted in dull and totally idea-proof resistance. I had at the time no idea of going into public life, and I never studied elocution or practiced debating. This was 20 a loss to me in one way. In another way it was not. Per- sonally I have not the slightest s\Tiipathy with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given proposition and told to maintain it without the least refer- ence to whether those maintaining it believe in it or not. 1 25 know that under our system this is necessary for lawyers, but I emphatically disbelieve in it as regards general dis- cussion of political, social, and industrial matters. What we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of the right; not young men whoso can make a good argument for either right or wrong as their interest bids them. The present method of carrying 12 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS on debates on such subjects as '^Our Colonial Policy," or ^'The Need of a Navy," or ^'The Proper Position of the Courts in Constitutional Questions," encourages precisely the wrong attitude among those who take part in them. 5 There is no effort to instill sincerity and intensity of conviction. On the contrary, the net result is to make the contestants feel that their convictions have nothing to do with their arguments. T am sorry I did not study elocution in college; but I am exceedingly glad that I did 10 not take part in the type of debate in which stress is laid, not upon getting a speaker to think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly on the side to wliich he is assigned, without regard either to what his convictions are or to what they ought to be. 15 I was a reasonably good student in college, standing just within the first tenth of my class, if I remember rightly; although I am not sure whether this means the tenth of the whole number that entered or of those that graduated. I was given a Phi Beta Kappa ° ^^key." My chief interests 20w^ere scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson,° or Baird, or Coues° type — a man like Hart Merriam,^ or Franlc Chapman, ° or Hornaday,° to-day. My father had from 25 the earhest days instilled into me the knowledge that I was to work and to make my own way in the world, and I had always supposed that this meant that I must enter busi- ness. But in my freshman year (he died when I was a sophomore) he told me that if I wished to become a scien- ce tific man I could do so. He explained that I must be sure - that I really intensely desired to do scientific work, because if I went into it I must make it a serious career; that he BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 13 had made money enough to enable me to take up such a career and do non-remunerative work of value if I in- tended to do the very best work there was in me; but that I must not dream of taking it up as a dilettante. He also gave me a piece of advice that I have always remem-5 bered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went into a scientific lo career, I must definitely abandon all thought of the enjoy- ment that could accompany a money-making career, and must find my pleasures elsewhere. After this conversation I fully intended to make science my life work. I did not, for the simple reason that at that is time Harvard, and I suppose our other colleges, utterly ignored the possibilities of the faunal naturalist, the out- door naturalist and observer of nature. They treated biology as purely a science of the laboratory and the microscope, a science whose adherents were to spend 20 their time in the study of minute forms of marine life, or else in section-cutting and the study of the tissues of the higher organisms under the microscope. This attitude was, no doubt, in part due to the fact that in most colleges then there was a not always intelligent copying of what 25 was done in the great German universities. The sound revolt against superficiality of study had been carried to an extreme; thoroughness in minutise as the only end of study had been erected into a fetish. There was a total failure to understand the great variety of kinds of work 30 that could be done by naturalists, including what could be done by outdoor naturalists — the kind of work which 14 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS Hart Merriam and his assistants in the Biological Survey- have carried to such a high degree of perfection as regards North American mammals. In the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid shpshod methods, the tend- 5 ency was to treat as not serious, as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with laborious mi- nuteness in the laboratory. M}^ taste was specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no more desire or ability to be a microscopist and section-cutter than to 10 be a mathematician. Accordingly I abandoned all thought of becoming a scientist. Doubtless this meant that I really did not have the intense devotion to science which I thought I had; for, if I had possessed such de- votion, I would have carved out a career for myself some- 15 how without regard to discouragements. The teaching which. I received was genuinely dem- ocratic in one way. It was not so democratic in another. I grew into manhood thoroughly imbued with the feel- ing that a man must be respected for what he made of 20 himself. But I had also, consciously or unconsciously, been taught that socially and industrially pretty much the whole duty of the man lay in thus making the best of himself; that he should be honest in his dealings with others and charitable in the old-fashioned way to the un- 25 fortunate; but that it was no part of his business to join with others in trying to make things better for the many by curbing the abnormal and excessive development of individualism in a few. Now I do not mean that this training was by any means all bad. On the contrary, 30 the insistence upon individual responsibility was, and is, and always will be, a prime necessity. Teaching of BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 15 the kind I absorbed from both my text-books and my surroundings is a healthy anti-scorbutic to the senti- mentahty which by complacently excusing the individ- ual for all his shortcomings would finally hopelessly weaken the spring of moral purpose. It also keeps alive that 5 virile vigor for the lack of which in the average individ- ual no possible perfection of law or of community action can ever atone. But such teaching, if not corrected by other teaching, means acquiescence in a riot of lawless business individualism which would be quite as de- lo structive to real civilization as the lawless military in- dividualism of the Dark Ages.° I left college and entered the big world owing more than I can express to the train- ing I had received, especially in my own home; but with much else also to learn if I were to become really fitted 15 to do my part in the work that lay ahead for the gener- eration of Americans to which I belonged. THE VIGOR OF LIFE Having been a sickly boy, with no natural bodily prow- ess, and having lived much at home, I was at first quite unable to hold my own when thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents. I was nervous and 5 timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired — rang- ing from the soldiers of Valley Forge,° and Morgan^s riflemen,.^ to the heroes of m}^ favorite stories — and from hearing of the feats performed by my Southern fore- fathers and kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I 10 felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world, and I had a great de- sire to be like them. Until I was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more definite shape than day-dreams. Then an incident happened that did me real good. Hav- ising an attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake.° On the stage-coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys who were about my own age, but ver}^ much more competent and also much more mischievous. I have no doubt they were good- 20 hearted boys, but they were boys! They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and indus- triously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one singly could not only handle 25 me with easy contempt, but handle me so as not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in return. The experience taught me what probably no amount of good advice could have taught me. I made up my mind 16 THE VIGOR OF LIFE 17 that I must try to learn so that I would not again be put in such a helpless position, and having become quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by training. Accordingly, with my 5 father^s hearty approval, I started to learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improve- ment whatever. My first boxing master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I can see his rooms now, with colored lO pictures of the fights between Tom Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan° and Sayers, and other great events in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to excite interest among his patrons, he held a series of ^^cham- pionship'' matches for the different weights, the prizes is being, at least in my own class, pewter mugs of a value, I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither he nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was entered in the lightweight contest, in which it happened that I was pitted in succession against a couple of reedy striplings 20 who were even worse than I was. Equally to their sur- prise and to my own, and to John Long's, I won, and the pewter mug became one of my most prized possessions. I kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear bragged about it, for a number of years, and I only wish I knew where it 25 was now. Years later I read an account of a little man who once in a fifth-rate handicap race won a worthless pewter medal and joyed in it ever after. Well, as soon as I read that story I felt that that little man and I were brothers. 30 This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my ex- ceedingly rare athletic triumphs which would be worth . 18 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS relating. I did a good deal of boxing and wrestling in Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in either, even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the Gym, I got either into the finals or semi-finals, I forget 5 which; but aside from this the chief part I played was to act as trial horse for some friend or classmate who did have a chance of distinguishing himself in the champion- ship contests. I was fond of horseback-riding, but I took to it slowly 10 and with difficulty, exactly as with boxing. It was a long time before I became even a respectable rider, and I never got much higher. I mean by this that I never became a first-flight man in the hunting field, and never even approached the bronco-busting class in the 15 West. Any man, if he chooses, can gradually school himself to the requisite nerve, and gradually learn the requisite seat and hands, that will enable him to do re- spectably across country, or to perform the average work on a ranch. Of my ranch experiences I shall speak later. 20 I was fond of walking and climbing. As a lad I used to go to the north woods, in Maine, both in fall and winter. There I made life friends of two men. Will Dow and Bill Sewall: I canoed with them, and tramped through the woods with them, visiting the winter logging camps 25 on snow-shoes. Afterward they were with me in the West. Will Dow is dead. Bill Sewall was collector of customs under me, on the Aroostook° border. Except when hunting I never did any mountaineering save for a couple of conventional trips up the Matterhorn° and 30 the Jungfrau° on one occasion when I was in Switzerland. I never did much with the shotgun, but I practiced a THE VIGOR OF LIFE 19 good deal with the rifle. I had a rifle range at Saga- more Hill,° where I often took friends to shoot. Once or twice when I was visited by parties of released Boer prisoners, after the close of the South African War,^ they and I held shooting matches together. The bests man with both pistol and rifle who ever shot there was Stewart Edward White.° My own experience as regards marksmanship was much the same as my experience as regards horseman- ship. There are men whose eye and hand are so quick lo and so sure that they achieve a perfection of marksman- ship to which no practice will enable ordinary men to attain. There are other men who cannot learn to shoot with any accuracy at all. In between come the mass of men of ordinary abilities who, if they choose resolutely is to practice, can by sheer industry and judgment make themselves fair rifle shots. The men who show this requisite industry and judgment can without special difficulty raise themselves to the second class of re- spectable rifle shots; and it is to this class that I belong. 20 But to have reached this point of marksmanship with the rifle at a target by no means implies ability to hit game in the field, especially dangerous game. All kinds of other qualities, moral and physical, enter into being a good hunter, and especially a good hunter after dangerous 25 game, just as all kinds of other qualities in addition to skill with the rifle enter into being a good soldier. With dangerous game, after a fair degree of efficiency with the rifle has been attained, the prime requisites are cool judgment and that kind of nerve which consists in avoid- 30 ing being rattled. Any beginner is apt to have ^'buck 20 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS fever/' ° and therefore no beginner should go at dangerous game. I have shot only kinds of animals which could fairly be called dangerous game — that is, the lion, elephant, 5 rhinoceros and buffalo in Africa, and the big grizzly bear a quarter of a century ago in the Rockies. Taking into account not only my own personal experience, but the experiences of many veteran hunters, I regard all the four African animals, but especially the lion, elephant, and 10 buffalo, as much more dangerous than the grizzly. As it happened, however, the only narrow escape I person- ally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhinoceros — all of which goes to show that a man must not general- is ize too broadly from his own personal experiences. On the whole, I think the lion the most dangerous of all these five animals; that is, I think that, if fairly hunted, there is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a given number of lions killed than for a given number 20 of any one of the other animals. Yet I personally had no difficulties with lions. I twice killed lions which were at bay and just starting to charge, and I killed a heavy-maned male while it was in full charge. But in each instance I had plenty of leeway, the animal being 25 so far off that even if my bullet had not been fatal I should have had time for a couple of more shots. The African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that the few that I shot did not charge. A bull elephant, a vicious ^^ rogue,'' which had been kilHng 30 people in the native villages, did charge before being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards. Another THE VIGOR OF LIFE 21 bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle in killing the bull I was after — the first wild elephant I had ever seen. The second bull came through the thick brush to my left like a steam plows through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past him behind a tree. People have asked me how I felt on this occasion. My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of ic like experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment a hunter is so very busy that he has no time to get fright- ened. He wants to get in his cartridges and try another shot. Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much is the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know. Gen- erally their attitude is one of mere stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot I mortall}^ wounded at a few rods^ distance, and it 20 charged with the utmost determination, whereat I and my companion both fired, and more by good luck than anything else brought it to the ground just thirteen paces from where we stood. Another rhinoceros may or may not have been meaning to charge me; I have never 25 been certain which. It heard us and came at us through rather thick brush, snorting and tossing its head. I am by no means sure that it had fixedly hostile inten- tions, and indeed with my present experience I think it likely that if I had not fired it would have flinched at 30 the last moment and either retreated or gone by me. But I am not a rhinoceros mind reader, and its actions were 22 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS such as to warrant my regarding it as a suspicious char- acter. I stopped it with a couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it. The skins of all these animals which I thus killed are in the National Museum at Wash- 5 ington. When obliged to live in cities, I for a long time found that boxing and wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exercise in condensed and attractive form. I was reluctantly obliged to abandon both as I grew older. 10 1 dropped the wrestling earliest. When I became Gov- ernor,° the champion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and I got him to come round three or four afternoons a week. Incidentally I may men- tion that his presence caused me a difficulty with the 15 Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat, explaining that I could have a billiard- table, billiards being recognized as a proper Guber- natorial amusement, but that a wrestling-mat sjnnbol- ized something unusual and unheard of and could not 20 be permitted. The middleweight champion was of course so much better than I was that he could not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I was not hurt — for wrestling is a much more violent amuse- ment than boxing. But after a couple of months he had 25 to go away, and he left as a substitute a good-humored, stalwart professional oarsman. The oarsman turned out to know very little about wresthng. He could not even take care of himself, not to speak of me. By the end of our second afternoon one of his long ribs had been caved in and 30 two of my short ribs badly damaged, and my left shoulder- blade so nearly shoved out of place that it creaked. He THE VIGOR OF LIFE 23 was nearly as pleased as I when I told him I thought we would ^Wote the war a failure '^ and abandon wrestling. After that I took up boxing again. While President I used to box with some of the aides, as well as play single- stick° with General Wood.° After a few years I had to 5 abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed the little blood-vessels. For- tunately it was my left eye, but the sight has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right ej^e, I should have lo been entirely unable to shoot. Accordingly I thought it better to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop boxing. I then took up jiu-jitsu° for a year or two. I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could is mention scores of others, because out of them grew my philosophy — perhaps they were in part caused by my philosophy — of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing. The dweller in cities has less chance than the 20 dweller in the country to keep his body sound and vig- orous. But he can do so, if only he will take the trouble. Any young law\^er, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assist- ant, can keep himself in good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who have ever served under me in the 25 National Guard and in my regiment were former clerks or floor- walkers. Why, Johnny Hayes, ° the Marathon victor, and at one time world champion, one of my val- ued friends and supporters, was a floor-walker in Bloom- ingdale's big department store. Surely with Johnny 30 Haye3 (is an exair.ple, any 3^oung man in a city can 24 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS hope to make his body all that a vigorous man^s body should be. I once made a speech to which I gave the title ^^The Strenuous Life/' ° Afterwards I published a volume of 5 essays with this for a title. There were two transla- tions of it which always especially pleased me. One was by a Japanese soldier who knew English well, and who had carried the essay all through the Manchurian° cam- paign, and later translated it for the benefit of his country- 10 men. The other was by an Italian lady, whose brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round with him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as ^^ Vigor di Vita.'' I thought 15 this translation a great improvement on the original, and have always wished that I had myself used ^^The Vigor of Life'' as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of the heading I actually did use. 20 There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed in the achievement of success. There is, first, the success either in big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no 25 amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to do. This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man possesses may be that which enables him to run a 30 hundred yards in nine and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the same time bhndfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once THE VIGOR OF LIFE 25 without effort, or to write the '^Ode to a Grecian Urn," ° or to deUver the Gettysburg speech,^ or to show the ability of Frederick ° at Leuthen or Nelson ° at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable any good ordinary man to perform any one 5 of these feats. Of course the proper performance of each implies much previous study or training, but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the ordinary man does not have. lo This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner t3rpe of success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that is which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has given that quaUty. This kind of success is open to a large number of persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the 20 kind of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable men- tal or physical attributes, but who gets just as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does possess. It is the only kind of success that is open 25 to most of us. Yet some of the greatest successes in his- tory have been those of this second class — ^when I call it second class I am not running it down in the least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first class. To the average man it is probably more use- 3a ful to study this second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the first he can learn inspira- 26 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS tion, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm. From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similiar success himself. I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won shave been of the second type. I never won anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in advance. Hav- ing been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young man at first both nervous and distrustful of my 10 own prowess. I had to train myself painfully and labo- riously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit. When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books" which always impressed me. In this passage the 15 captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is fright- ened when he g'oes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that 20 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 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 25 was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at 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 30 they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which they anticipate and school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on THE VIGOR OF LIFE 27 them, and they will behave well in sudden and unex- pected emergencies which come upon them unawares. It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy and respect the men who are nat- urally fearless. But it is a good thing to remember that 5 the man who does not enjoy this advantage can never- theless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, if he chooses to. Of course he must not let his desire take the form merely of a day- dream. Let him dream about being a fearless man, lo and the more he dreams the better he will be, always provided he does his best to realize the dream in prac- tice. He can do his part honorablj^ and well provided only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as something to be is faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it, not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger interests of the great game in which we are all engaged. 20 ENTERING POLITICS^ When I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. If I had been sufficiently fortunate to come under Professcy Thayer,° of the Harvard Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer can do a great 5 work for justice and against legalism. But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of the teaching of the law books and of the class-room seemed to me to be against justice. The caveat emptor^ side of the law, like the caveat emptor side of business, seemed 10 to me repellent; it did not make for social fair deahng. The ^^let the buyer beware^' maxim, when translated into actual practice, whether in law or business, tends to translate itself further into the seller making his profit at the expense of the buyer, instead of by a bargain 15 which shall be to the profit of both. It did not seem to me that the law was framed to discourage as it should sharp practice, and all other kinds of bargains except those which are fair and of benefit to both sides. I was young; there was much in the judgment which I then 20 formed on this matter which I should now revise; but, then as now, many of the big corporation lawyers, to whom the ordinary members of the bar then as now looked up, held certain standards which were difficult to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose every 25 high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been obliged to earn every cent I spent, I should have gone whole- heartedly into the business of making both ends meet, and should have taken up the law or any other respect- able occupation — ^for I then held, and now hold, the be- 28 ENTERING POLITICS 29 lief that a man^s first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care of those dependent upon him; and I then believed, and now believe, that the greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married, and that no other form of success or service, for either man or 5 woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alter- native. But it happened that I had been left enough money by my father not to make it necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself and family. I had enough to get bread. What I had to do, if I wanted butter lo and jam, was to provide the butter and jam, but to count their cost as compared with other things. In other words, I made up my mind that, while I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money the secondary instead of the primary object of my career. If I had had no is money at all, then my first duty would have been to earn it in any honest fashion. As I had some money, I felt that my need for more money was to be treated as a secondary need, and that while it was my business to make more money where I legitimately and properly 2 a could, yet that it was also my business to treat other kinds of work as more important than money-making. Almost immediately after leaving Harvard in 1880 I began to take an interest in politics. I did not then be- lieve, and I do not now believe, that any man should 25 ever attempt to make poHtics his only career. It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office. Such a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while in office, and always 30 puts him under the heaviest strain of pressure to barter his convictions for the sake of holding ofl&ce. A man 30 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS should have some other occupation — I had several other occupations — to which he can resort if at any time he is thrown out of office, or at any time he finds it necessary to choose a course which will probably result in his being 5 thrown out, unless he is willing to stay in at cost to his conscience. I was elected to the Legislature ® in the fall of 1881 and found myself the youngest man in that body. I was re-elected the two following years. Like all young men 10 and inexperienced members, I had considerable diffi- culty in teaching myself to speak. I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed old countryman — who was unconsciously paraphrasing the Duke of Wellington,"^ who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody else. 15 The advice ran: ^' Don't speak until you are sure you have something to say, and know just what it is; then say it, and sit down.'^ My first days in the Legislature were much like those of a boy in a strange school. My fellow-legislators and I eyed 20 one another with mutual distrust. Each of us chose his seat, each began by following the lead of some veteran in the first routine matters, and then, in a week or two, we began to drift into groups according to our several af- finities. The Legislature was Democratic. I was a 25 Republican from the ^^silk stocking'' district, the wealth- iest district in New York, and I was put, as one of the minority members, on the Committee of Cities. It was a coveted position. I did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know, was put there merely because 30 it was felt to be in accordance with the fitness of things. ENTERING POLITICS ai My closest friend for the three years I was there was Billy O'Neill, from the Adirondacks. He kept a small crossroads store. He was a young man, although a few years older than I was, and, like myself, had won his position without regard to the machine. He had thought 5 he would like to be Assemblyman, so he had taken his buggy and had driven around Franklin County visiting everybody, had upset the local ring, and came to the Legislature as his own master. There is surely something in American traditions that does tend to- lo ward real democracy in spite of our faults and short- comings. In most other countries two men of as dif- ferent antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings as Billy O'Neill and I would have had far more difficulty in coming together. I came from the biggest city in America and is from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from a back- woods county where he kept a store at a crossroads. In all the unimportant things we seemed far apart. But in all the important things we were close together. We looked at all questions from substantially the same 20 \dew-point, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every legislative fight during those three years. He abhorred demagogy just as he abhorred corruption. He had thought much on political problems; he admired Alex- ander Hamilton^ as much as I did, being a strong be- 25 Hever in a powerful National government; and we both of us differed from Alexander Hamilton in being stout adherents of Abraham Lincoln's views wherever the rights of the people were concerned. Any man who has met with success, if he will be frank with himself, must 30 admit that there has been a big element of fortune in the success. Fortune favored me, whereas her hand was 32 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS heavy against Billy O'Neill. All his life he had to strive hard to wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant fate; if fate had been but a httle kinder, I be- lieve he would have had a great political career; and he 5 would have done good service for the country in any position in which he might have been put. In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were mainly problems of honesty and decency and of legislative and adminisistrative efficiency. They rep- 10 resented the effort, the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to get efficient and honest government. But as yet I understood little of the effort which was already be- ginning, for the most part under very bad leadership, to secure a more genuine social and industrial justice. Nor 15 was I especially to blame for this. The good citizens I then knew best, even when themselves men of limited means — men like my colleague Billy O'Neill, and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow — were no more awake than I was to the changing needs the changing 20 times were bringing. Their outlook was as narrow as my own, and, within its limits, as fundamentally sound. I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, even though as 3^et it was not broad enough. We V^ere no respecters of persons. Where our vision was devel- 25 oped to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we opposed it whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found that it needed much more courage to stand up openly against labor men when they were wrong than against capitalists when they were wrong. The sins 30 against labor are usually committed, and the improper services to capitalists are usually rendered, behind closed ENTERING POLITICS 33 doors. Very often the man with the moral courage to speak in the open against labor when it is wrong is the only man anxious to do effective work for labor when labor is right. The only kinds of courage and honesty which ares permanently useful to good institutions anywhere are those shown by men who decide all cases with impartial justice on grounds of conduct and not on grounds of class. We found that in the long run the men who in public blatantly insisted that labor was never wrong were the lo very men who in private could not be trusted to stand for labor when it was right. We grew heartily to dis- trust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that tjrpe of ''reformer^' is as noxious is now as he ever was. The loud-mouthed upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how flagrant, if committed nomi- nally in the interest of labor, has either a warped mind 20 or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man. It was largely the indignant and contemptuous dishke aroused in our minds by the demagogues of this class which then prevented those of us whose instincts at bottom were sound from going as far as we ought to have 25 gone along the lines of governmental control of corpo- rations and governmental interference on behalf of labor. Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had walked into these traps our public careers would have ended, at least so far as following them under the condi- 30 tions which alone make it worth wliile to be in pubhc life at 34 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS all. A man can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can 5 lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupu- lous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private char- acter. Nor will clean conduct by itself enable a man to 10 render good service. I have always been fond of Josh Billings's^ remark that '^it is much easier to be a harm- less dove than a wise serpent.'' There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always com- 15 bined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey. He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when his public or his private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He 20 must walk warily and fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, by the way, that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly. 25 like most young men in pohtics, I went through various oscillations of feeling before I ^' found myself. '^ At one period I became so impressed with the virtue of complete independence that I proceeded to act on each case purely as I personally viewed it, without paying any 30 heed to the principles and prejudices of others. The result was that I speedily, and deservedly, lost all power of accomplishing anything at all; and I thereby learned ENTERING POLITICS 35 the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act in combination with his fellows, which means a cer- tain amount of give-and-take between him and them. Again, I at one period began to believe that I had as future before me, and that it behooved me to be very far- sighted and scan each action carefully with a view to its possible effect on that future. This speedily made me useless to the public and an object of aversion to myself; and I then made up my mind that I would try not to lo think of the future g.t all, but would proceed on the assumption that each office I held would be the last I ever should hold, and that I would confine myself to trying to do my work as well as possible while I held that office. I found that for me personally this was the 15 onl}^ way in which I could either enjoy myself or render good service to the country, and I never afterwards de- viated from this plan. During my three years^ ser^'ice in the Legislature I worked on a very simple philosophy of government. It 20 was that personal character and initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for the need of collective action. I shall never 25 forget the men ^\^th whom I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts who helped us. We had made up our 30 minds that we must not fight fire with fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in prac- 36 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS tical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in applied morality. It was not always easy to keep the just middle, es- pecially when it happened that on one side there were ■ 5 corrupt and unscrupulous demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous reactionaries. Our effort v/as to hold the scales even between both. We tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates were anything but righteous. We endeavored 10 to cut out the abuses of property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding those abuses. We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper as- saults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property themselves did things that were wicked and 15 corrupt. We were as yet by no means as thoroughly awake as Vv^e ought to have been to the need of controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of politics with big business. In this matter I was not behind the rest of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of 20 them, for no serious leader in political life then appre- ciated the prime need of grappling with these questions. One partial reason — not an excuse or a justification, but a partial reason — for my slowness in grasping the im- portance of action in these matters was the corrupt and 25 unattractive nature of so many of the men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even at that date I had neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money king, and I did 30 not regard the ^^ money touch, ^^ when divorced from other qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. As recited above, we did on more than ENTERING POLITICS 37 one occasion fight battles, in which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and powerful financiers and financial interests of the day. But most of the fights in which we were engaged were for pure hon- esty and decency, and they were more apt to be against 5^ that form of corruption which found its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which defended or advocated privilege. To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly lo as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government. A man who stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, inevitably grows to regard him- 15 self merely as one of many instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time, one at another, in achie\ing the triumph of those causes; and whenever the usefulness of any one has been exhausted it is to be thrown aside. If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing 20 that is next, when the time and the need come together, ^\ithout asking what the future holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it is given to 25 render greater services and reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can do better. IN COWBOY LAND Though I had previously made a trip into the then Ter- ritory of Dakota,^ beyond the Red River, it was not until 1883 that I went to the Little Missouri, and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the Chimney Butte and the 5 Elkhorn. It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, the West of Owen Wister's stories^ and Frederic Rem- ington's drawings,^ the West of the Indian and the buffalo-hunter, the soldier and the cow-puncher. That 10 land of the West has gone now, '^gone, gone with the lost Atlantis,^'' gone to the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories. It was a land of vast silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where the wild game stared at the passing horseman. It was a land of scattered ranches, 15 of herds of long-horned cattle, and of reckless riders who unmoved looked into the eyes of life or of death. In that land we led a free and hardy hfe, with horse and rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the heat; and we 20 knew the freezing misery of riding night guard round the cattle in the late fall round-up. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our eyes each night before we fell asleep; and in the winter we rode through blinding blizzards, when the driven snow-dust burnt our faces. 25 There were monotonous days, as we guided the trail cattle or the beef herds, hour after hour, at the slowest of walks; and minutes or hours teeming with excitement as we stopped stampedes or swam the herds across rivers treacherous with quicksands or brimmed with running IN COWBOY LAND 39 ice. We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst; and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of 5 living. It was right and necessary that this Ufe should pass, for the safety of our country lies in its being made the country of the small home-maker. The great un- fenced ranches, in the days of ^^free grass,^' necessarily lo represented a temporary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners, were the first enemies of tlie cattle-men; and owing to the way they ate out the grass and destroyed all other vegetation, these roving 15 sheep bands represented little of permanent good to the country. But the homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these represented from the National standpoint the most desirable of all possible 20 users of, and dwellers on, the soil. Their advent meant the breaking up of the big ranches; and the change was a National gain, although to some of us an individual loss. I reached the Little Missouri on a Northern Pacific train about three in the morning of a cool September day 25 in 1883. Aside from the station, the only building was a ramshackle structure called the Pyramid Park Hotel. I dragged my duffle-bag^ thither, and hammered at the door until the frowsy proprietor appeared, muttering oaths. He ushered me upstairs, where I was given one 30 of the fourteen beds in the room which by itself constituted the entire upper floor. Next day I walked over to the 40 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS abandoned army post, and, after some hours among the gray log shacks, a ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte ranch, where he was Hving with his brother and 5 their partner. The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for horses near by, and a chicken-house jabbed against the rear of the ranch house. Inside there was only one room, and a table, three or four chairs, a cooking- 10 stove, and three bunks. The owners were Sylvane and Joe Ferris and William J. Merrifield. . . . There was a fourth man, George Me3^er, who also worked for me later. That evening we all played old sledge"^ round the table, and at one period the game was interrupted 15 by a frightful squawking outside which told us that a bobcat had made a raid on the chicken-house. After a buffalo hunt with my original friend, Joe Ferris, I entered into partnership with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, and we started a cow ranch, with the maltese 20 cross brand — always known as ^^maltee cross,'' by the way, as the general impression along the Little Missouri was that ^^ maltese'' must be a plural. . . . They were among my most constant companions for the few years next succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted 25 the game of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them and many others like them on the round-up; and I brought out from Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two backwoods friends Sewall and Dow. My brands for 30 the lower ranch were the elkhorn and triangle. I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in IN COWBOY LAND 41 those days. It was a fine, healthy Kfe, too; it taught a man self-rehance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision — ^in short, the virtues that ought to come from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After the first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, s low ranch house of hewn logs, with a veranda, and with, in addition to the other rooms, a bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room with a big fire-place. I got out a rocking-chair — I am very fond of rocking-chairs — and enough books to fill two or three shelves, and a rubber lo bath-tub so that I could get a bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived more comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We always kept the house clean — using the word in a rather large sense. There were at least two rooms that were 15 always warm, even in the bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer, sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earher days, buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, 20 salt, and canned tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. 25 Most ranchmen at that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with ten thousand head of cattle where there was not a cow that could be milked. We made up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accord- ingly, we started to domesticate some of the cows. Our 30 first effort was not successful, chiefly because we did not devote the needed time and patience to the matter. 42 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on horseback, then rope her, throw her, and turn her upside down to milk her, while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of results. Gradually we accumulated 5 tame cows, and, after we had thinned out the bobcats and coyotes, more chickens. The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there ran only a trickle 10 of water, while in times of freshet it was filled brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down in long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer cliff walls, for the Bad Lands, 15 a chaos of peaks, plateaus, and ridges, rose abruptly from the edges of the level tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows. In front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cotton- wood trees with gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of air. From these trees came the 20 faraway, melancholy cooing of mourning doves, and little owls perched in them and called tremulously at night. In the long summer afternoons we would sometimes sit on the piazza, when there was no work to be done, for an hour or two at a time, watching the cattle on the sand-bars, and 25 the sharply channeled and strangly carved amphitheater of cliffs across the bottom opposite; while the "\ailtures wheeled overhead, their black shadows gliding across the glaring white of the dry river-bed. Sometimes from the ranch we saw deer, and once when we needed meat I 30 shot one across the river as I stood on the piazza. In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and IN COWBOY LAND 43 immovable as a bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes traveled up and down it as if it had been a highway passing in front of the ranch house. Often in the late fall or early winter, after a hard day's hunting, or when returning from one of the winter line camps, we s did not reach the ranch until hours after sunset; and after the weary tramping in the cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the fire-lit windows across the snowy wastes. The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall lo and Dow, who, like most men from the Maine woods, were mighty with the ax. I could chop fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third the work they could. One day when we were cutting down the cotton- wood trees, to begin our building operations, I heard is some one ask Dow what the total cut had been, and Dow not realizing that I was within hearing, answered: ^^Well, Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered down seventeen.'' Those who have seen the stump of a tree which has been gnawed down by a beaver 20 will understand the exact force of the comparison. In those days on a cow ranch the men were apt to be away on the various round-ups at least half the time. It was interesting and exciting work, and except for the lack of sleep on the spring and summer round-ups it was not ex- 25 hausting work; compared to lumbering or mining or black- smithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor. The ponies were of course grass-fed and unshod. Each man had his own string of nine or ten. One pony would be used for the morning work, one for the afternoon, and neither 30 would again be used for the next three days. A separate I)ony was kept for night riding. 44 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS I never became a good roper, nor more than an average rider, according to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents, and of these 5 1 had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round- up, I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed of itself. When I had 10 the opportunity, I broke my own horses, doing it gently and gradually and spending much time over it, and choos- ing the horses that seemed gentle to begin with. With these horses I never had any difficulty. But frequently there was neither time nor opportunity to handle our 15 mounts so elaborately. We might get a band of horses, each having been bridled and saddled two or three times, but none of them having been broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and saddling. Then each of us in succession would choose a horse (for his string), I as owner 20 of the ranch being given the first choice on each round, so to speak. The first time I was ever on a round-up Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and I each chose his string in this fashion. Three or four of the animals I got were not easy to ride. The effort both to ride them and to look as 25 if I enjoj^ed doing so, on some cool morning when my grin- ning cowboy friends had gathered round ^Ho see whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off,^^ doubtless was of benefit to me, but lacked much of being enjoyable. The time I smashed my rib I was bucked off on a stone. 30 The time I hurt the point of my shoulder I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went over back- wards with me. When we got up it still refused to go any- IN COWBOY LAND 45 where; so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground. When they released the ropes it lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started; 5 so Sylvane gave me liis horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never went over backwards, and he got onto the now re-arisen Ben Butler. To my discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while S^dvane remarked, ^^Why, there^s nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle lo horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, ''That's all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me out! he's lying on me! " Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged Sylvane from under him the first thing the rescued Sylvane did was to execute 15 a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous Ben. We could do nothing with him that da}^; subsequently we got him so that we could ride him; but he never became a nice saddle-horse. 20 On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geog- raphy books of my youth prairie fires were always por- trayed as taking place in long grass, and all living things ran before them. On the northern cattle plains the grass was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or beast. 25 The fires w^ere nothing like the forest fires in the Northern woods. But they destroyed large quantities of feed, and we had to stop them where possible. The process we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it in two length-wise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the ropeso of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, and that of the other to the hind leg. One of the men would 46 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS spur his horse over or through the hne of fire, and the two would then ride forward, dragging the steer bloody side downward along the line of flame, men following on foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets to beat out any flick- 5 ering blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire and the twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very exhausting, 10 the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task. In the old days in the ranch country we depended upon game for fresh meat. Nobody liked to kill a beef, and although now and then a maverick^ yearling might be killed 15 on the round-up, most of us looked askance at the deed, because if the practice of beef-killing was ever allowed to start, the rustlers — the horse thieves and cattle thieves — would be sure to seize on it as an excuse for general slaugh- ter. Getting meat for the ranch usually devolved upon 20 me. I almost always carried a rifle when I rode, either in a scabbard under my thigh, or across the pommel. Often I would pick up a deer or antelope while about my regular work, when visiting a line camp or riding after the cattle. At other times I would make a day's trip after them. In the 25 fall we sometimes took a wagon and made a week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating expe- riences, either failing to see game which I ought to have 30 seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that IN COWBOY LAND 47 if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. ^'It is dogged that does if in hunting as in in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, w^hen we were very hungrj^ I never killed anything but bucks. 5 Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and among the Rocky Mountains with my ranch fore- man Merrifield; or in later years with Tazewell Woody, John Willis, or John Goff. We hunted bears, both the black and the grizzly, cougars and wolves, and moose, lo wapiti, and white goat. On one of these trips I killed a bison bull, and I also killed a bison bull on the Little Missouri some fifty miles south of my ranch on a trip which Joe Ferris and I took together. It was rather a rough trip. Each of us carried only his slicker behind is him on the saddle, with some flour and bacon done up in it. We met with all kinds of misadventures. Finally one night, when we were sleeping by a slimy little prairie pool where there was not a stick of wood, we had to tie the horses to the horns of our saddles; and "^o then we went to sleep with our heads on the saddles. In the middle of the night something stampeded the horses, and away they went, with the saddles after them. As we jumped to our feet Joe eyed me with an evident sus- picion that I was the Jonah of the party, and said: ^'0 25 Lord! Fve never done anything to deserve this. Did you ever do anything to deserve this? '' I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of course means to the men and women I met in the West. 30 There were a few people of bad type in my neighbor- hood — that would be true of every group of men, even in 48 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS a theological seminary — ^but T could not speak with too great affection and respect of the great majority of my friends, the hard-working men and women who dwelt for a space of perhaps a hundred and fifty miles along the 5 Little Missouri. I was always as welcome at their houses as they were at mine. Everybody worked, everybody was willing to help everybody else, and yet nobody asked any favors. The same thing was true of the people whom T got to know fifty miles east and fifty miles west of my 10 own range, and of the men T met on the round-ups. They soon accepted me as a friend and fellow-worker who stood on an equal footing with them, and I believe that most of them have kept their feeling for me ever since. No guests were ever more welcome at the White House 15 than these old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps — the men with whom T had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a chuck-wagon^-whenever they turned up at Washington during my Presidency. I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one 20 day just before lunch, a huge, powerful man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a fighting character. Tt happened that on that day another old friend, the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce,° was among those coming to lunch. Just before we went in T turned to my cow- 25 puncher friend and said to him with great solemnity, ^'Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause international complications;^' to which Jim responded with unaffected horror, ^^Why, Colonel, I 30 shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of it! " Not only did the men and the women whom I met in the cow country quite unconsciously help me, by the in- IN COWBOY LAND 49 sight which warking and Hving with them enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the right type, but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind that they were men of just the kind whom it would be well to have with me if ever it became neces- 5 sary to go to war. When the Spanish War came, I gave this thought practical realization. Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, have made these men live as long as our lit- erature lives. I have sometimes been asked if Wister 's lo '^ Virginian^' is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards in my is regiment might have walked out of Wister's stories or Remington's pictures. There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of course, and under the conditions of life they were probably more dangerous than they would 20 have been elsewhere. I hardly ever had any difficulty, however. I never went into a saloon, and in the little hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I always endeavored to 25 keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade my mak- ing any further effort to avoid it, and I veiy rarely had even the semblance of trouble. Of course amusing incidents occurred now and then. Usually these took place when I was hunting lost horses, 30 for in hunting lost horses I was ordinarily alone, and occa- sionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred and fifty 50 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS miles away from my own country. On one such occasion I reached a Httle cow town long after dark, stabled my horse in an empty outbuilding, and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my request for a bed that 5 1 could have the last one left, as there was only one other man in it. The room to which I was shown contained two double beds; one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one man, also asleep. This man proved to be a friend, one of the Bill Joneses whom I have previously men- lotioned. I undressed according to the fashion of the day and place, that is, I put my trousers, boots, shaps, and gun down beside the bed, and turned in. A couple of hours later I was awakened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed in my face, the light gleaming on the 15 muzzle of a cocked .45. Another man said to the lantern- bearer, ^'It ain't him;'^ the next moment my bedfellow was covered with two guns, and addressed, ^'Now, Bill, don't make a fuss, but come along quiet.'' ^^I'm not think- ing of making a fuss," said Bill. ^^ That's right," was the 20 answer; ^^ we're your friends; we don't want to hurt you; we just want you to come along, you know why." And Bill pulled on his trousers and boots and walked out with them. Up to this time there had not been a sound from the other bed. Now a match was scratched, a candle lit, 25 and one of the men in the other bed looked round the room. At this point I committed the breach of etiquette of asking questions. ^^I wonder why they took Bill," I said. There was no answer, and I repeated ^^I wonder why they took Bill." ^^Well," said the man with the candle, dryly, 30^^ I reckon they wanted him," and with that he blew out the candle and conversation ceased. Later I discovered that Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern IN COWBOY LAND 51 Pacific train at a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him dance. This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific people pos- sessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the 5 ground that by delaying the train he had interfered with the mails. The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive little hotel than the one in question. It was also on an occasion when I was out after lost horses, lo Below the hotel had merely a bar-room, a dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar- room as I came up, and I dishked going in. But there is was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand 20 was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face. He was not a ^'bad man'' of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer type, but he was an objectionable 25 creature, a would-be bad man, a bully who for the mo- ment was ha\ang things all his own way. As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ^^Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said, ^'Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, 30 thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him 52 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels were close together, so that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in response 5 to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, ^ I said, ^^Well, if IVe got to, IVe got to,'' and rose, look- ing past him. As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left 10 as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head. It was not a case in which one could 15 afford to take chances, and if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as 20 possible, sitting in a corner of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant came to, he went down to the station 25 and left on a freight. There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should hke to see imitated in more advanced communities. Cer- tain crimes of revolting baseness and cruelty were never 30 forgiven. But in the case of ordinary offenses, the man who had served his term and who then tried to make good was given a fair chance; and of course this was equally IN COWBOY LAND 53 true of the women. Every one who has studied the sub- ject at all is only too well aware that the world offsets the readiness with which it condones a crime for which a man escapes punishment, by its unforgiving relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who is punished, and who 5 therefore has made his atonement. On the frontier, if the man honestly tried to behave himself there was generally a disposition to give him fair play and a decent show. Sev- eral of the men I knew and whom I particularly liked came in this class. There was one such man in my regiment, a lo man who had served a term for robbery under arms, and who had atoned for it by many years of fine performance of duty. I put him in a high official position, and no man under me rendered better service to the State, nor was there any man whom, as soldier, as civil officer, as citizen. 15 and as friend, I valued and respected — and now value and respect — more. Now I suppose some good people will gather from this that I favor men who commit crimes. I certainly do not favor them. I have not a particle of sympathy with the sen- 20 timentality — as I deem it, the mawkishness — which over- flows with foolish pity for the criminal and cares not at all for the victim of the criminal. I am glad to see wrong- doers punished. The punishment is an absolute necessity from the standpoint of society; and I put the reformation 25 of the criminal second to the welfare of society. But I do desire to see the man or w^oman who has paid the pen- alty and who washes to reform given a helping hand — surely every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he too may stumble, and should be anxious to help his 30 brother or sister who has stumbled. When the criminal has been punished, if he then shows a sincere desire to lead 54 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS a decent and upright life, he should be given the chance, he should be helped and not hindered; and if he makes good, he should receive that respect from others which so often aids in creating self-respect — ^the most invaluable 5 of all possessions. THE ROUGHRIDERS In the spring of 1897 President McKinley appointed me Assistant Secretary of the Navy. I owed the appoint- ment chiefly to the efforts of Senator H. C. Lodge,° of Mas- sachusetts, who doubtless was actuated chiefly by his long and close friendship for me, but also — I like to be- 5 lieve — by his keen interest in the Navy.° The first book I had ever published, fifteen years previousl}^, was '^The History of the Naval War of 1812;" and I have always taken the interest in the Navy which every good Amer- ican ought to take. At the time I wrote the book, in the lo early eighties, the navy had reached its nadir, and we were then utterly incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all. Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to build up a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout steps we took to accom- i5 plish our purpose. In the reaction after the colossal struggle of the Civil War our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole energy into business, into money-making, into the development, and above all the exploitation and exhaustion at the most rapid rate pos-20 sible, of our natural resources — mines, forests, soil, and rivers. These men were not weak men, but they per- mitted themselves to grow shortsighted and selfish; and while many of them down at the bottom possessed the fundamental virtues, including the fighting virtues, others 25 were purely of the glorified huckster or glorified pawn- broker type — which when developed to the exclusion of everything else makes about as poor a national type as the world has seen. This unadulterated huckster or pawn- 55 56 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS . broker type is rarely keenly sympathetic in matters of social and industrial justice, and is usually physically timid and likes to cover an unworthy fear of the most just war under high-sounding names. 5 It was reinforced by the large mollycoddle vote — the people who are soft physically and morally, or who have a twist in them which makes them acidly cantankerous and unpleasant as long as they can be so with safety to their bodies. In addition there are the good people with 10 no imagination and no foresight, who think war will not come, but that if it does come armies and navies can be improvised — a very large element, typified by a Senator I knew personally who, in a public speech, in answer to a question as to what we would do if America were sud- isdenly assailed by a first-class military power, answered that ''we would build a battle-ship in every creek.'' Then, among the wise and high-minded people who in self- respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, for there are the foolish fanatics always to be found 20 in such a movement and always discrediting it — the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform move- ments. All these elements taken together made a body of pub- lic opinion so important during the decades immediately 25 succeeding the Civil War as to put a stop to any serious ef- fort to keep the Nation in a condition of reasonable mili- tary prepardness. The representatives of this opinion then voted just as they now do when they vote against battle- ships or against fortifying the Panama Canal. It would 30 have been bad enough if we had been content to be weak, and, in view of our weakness, not to bluster. But we were not content with such a policy. We wished THE ROUGHRIDERS 57 to enjoy the incompatible luxuries of an unbridled tongue and an unready hand. There was a very large element which was ignorant of our military weakness, or, naturally enough, unable to understand it; and another large element which liked to please its own vanity by 5 listening to offensive talk about foreign nations. Accord- ingly, too many of our pohticians, especially in Congress found that the cheap and easy thing to do was to please the foolish peace people by keeping us weak, and to please ihe foohsh violent people by passing denuncia- lo tory resolutioru'i about international matters — resolutions which would have been improper even if we had been strong. Their idea was to please both the mollycoddle vote and the vote of the international tail-twisters by uphold- ing, with pretended ardor and mean intelligence, a Nar- is tional poUcy of peace with insult. I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nationals or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so 20 long as, it is possible honorably to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative 25 to dishonor. I describe the folly of which so many of our people were formerly guilty, in order that we may in our own day be on our guard against similar folly. We did not at the time of which I write take our for- eign duties seriously, and as we combined bluster in speech 30 with refusal to make any preparation whatsoever for action, we were not taken seriously in return. Gradually a slight 58 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS change for the better occurred, the writings of Captain Mahan° playing no small part therein. We built some mod- ern cruisers to start with; the people who felt that battle- ships were wicked compromising with their misguided 5 consciences by saying that the cruisers could be used ^Ho protect our commerce'^ — ^which they could not be, unless they had battle-ships to back them. Then we attempted to build more powerful fighting vessels, and as there was a section of the public which regarded battle-ships as pos- losessing a name immorally suggestive of violence, we com- promised by calling the new ships armored cruisers, and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the de- fects and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got to the point of building battle-ships. But there still re- 15 mained a public opinion, as old as the time of Jefferson,^ which thought that in the event of war all our problem ought to be one of coast defense, that we should do noth- ing except repel attack; an attitude about as sensible as that of a prize-fighter who expected to 'v\dn by merely 20 parrying instead of hitting. To meet the susceptibilities of this large class of well-meaning people, we provided for the battle-ships under the name of ^' coast defense battle- ships; '^ meaning thereby that we did not make them quite as seaworthy as they ought to have been, or with quite as 25 much coal capacit}^ as they ought to have had. Then we decided to build real battle-ships. But there still remained a lingering remnant of public opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, and we met this in beautiful fashion by providing for ''seagoing coast defense battle-ships" — ■ 30 the fact that the name was a contradiction in terms being of very small consequence compared to the fact that we did thereby get real battle-ships. THE ROUGHRIDERS 59 Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly and in fleet formation, and they had to be trained to use the new weapons of precision with which the ships were armed. Not a few of the older officers, kept in the service under our foolish rule of pure seniority promotion, wei:e5 not competent for the task; but a proportion of the older officers were excellent, and this was true of almost all the younger officers. They were naturally first-class men, trained in the admirable naval school at Annapolis. They were overjoyed that at last they were given proper lo instruments to work with, and they speedily grew to handle these ships individually in the best fashion. They were fast learning to handle them in squadron and fleet formation; but when the war with Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the principles of modern 15 scientific naval gunnery. Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy I became convinced that the war would come. The revolt in Cuba had dragged its weary length until conditions in the island had become so dreadful as to 20 be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist. There is much that I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there are few men for whom I have felt greater respect than for certain gentlemen of Spain whom I have known. But Spain attempted to govern her colonies 25 on archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind. In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with un- speakable horror, degradation, and misery. It was not 30 '^war^' at all, but murderous oppression. Cuba was devastated. 60 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS When the Maine° was blown up in Havana Harbor, war became inevitable. A number of the peace-at-any- price men of course promptl}^ assumed the position that she had blown herself up; but investigation showed that the 5 explosion was from outside. And, in any event, it would have been impossible to prevent war. Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leon- ard Wood. He was a surgeon. Not having an income, he had to earn his owti living. He had gone through the 10 Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army in the Southwest as a contract doctor. He had every physical, moral, and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier's life and for the exercise of command. In the inconceivably wearing and harassing campaigns against 15 the Apaches° he had served nominally as a surgeon, really in command of troops, on more than one expedi- tion. He was as anxious as I was that if there were war we should both have our part in it. I had always fdt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position 20 to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it. Moreover, I had ve-y deeply felt that it was our duty to free Cuba, and I had publicly expressed this feeling; and when a man takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make 25 his words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong reason to the contrary. He should pay with his body. As soon as war was upon us. Wood and I began to try for a chance to go to the front. Congress had authorized 30 the raising of three National Volunteer Cavalry regiments wholly apart from the State contingents. Secretary THE ROUGHRIDERS 61 Alger° of the War Department was fond of me personally, and Wood was his family doctor. Alger had been a gal- lant soldier in the Civil War, and was almost the only member of the Administration who felt all along that we would have to go to war with Spain over Cuba. He 5 liked my attitude in the matter, and because of his remem- brance of his own experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the front. Accordingly he offered me the command of one of the regiments. I told him that after six weeks" service in the field I would feel competent to lo handle the regiment, but that I would not know how to equip it or how to get it into the first action; but that W^ood was entirely competent at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood colonel I would accept the heutenant-colonelcy. General Alger thought this i5 an act of foolish self-abnegation on my part — instead of its being, what it was, the ^vise&t act I could have per- formed. He told me to accept the colonelcy, and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that Wood would do the work anyway; but I answered that I did 20 not wish to rise on any man's shoulders; that I hoped to be given every chance that my deeds and abihties warranted; but that I did not wish what I did not earn, and that above all I did not wish to hold any position where any one else did the work. He laughed at me a 25 little and said I was foohsh, but I do not tliink he really minded, and he promised to do as I wished. True to his word, he secured the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself as lieutenant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. This was soon nicknamed, 30 both by the public a..l ^:y the rest of the army, the Rough Riders, doubtless because the bulk of the men were from 62 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS the Southwestern ranch country and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of the great plains. Wood instantly began the work of raising the regiment. He first assembled several old non-commissioned officers of experience, put them in office, and gave them blanks for requisitions for the full equipment of a cavalry regiment. He selected San Antonio° as the gathering-place, as it was in a good horse country, near the Gulf, from some port on which we would have to embark, and near an 10 old arsenal and an old army post from which we got a good deal of stuff — some of it practically condemmed, but which we found serviceable at a pinch, and much better than noth- ing. He organized a horse board in Texas, and began pur- chasing all horses that were not too big and were sound. 15 A day or two after he was commisioned he wrote out in the office of the Secretary of War, under his authority, telegrams to the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory, in substance as follows: ^^ The President desires to raise — volunteers in your 20 Territory to form part of a regiment of mounted rifleman to be commanded by Leonard Wood, Colonel; Theodore Roosevelt, Lieutenant-Colonel. He desires that the men selected should be young, sound, good shots and good riders, and that you expedite by all means in your power 25 the enrollment of these men. '' (Signed) R. A. Alger, Secretary of War.'' As soon as he had attended to a few more odds and ends he left Washington, and the day after his arrival in San Antonio the troops began to arrive. 30 The regiment assembled at San Antonio. When I reached there, the men, rifles, and horses, which were the THE ROUGHRIDERS 63 essentials, were coming in fast, and the saddles, blankets, and the like were also accumulating. Thanks to Wood's exertions, when we reached Tampa"" we were rather better equipped than most of the regular regiments. We adhered strictly to field equipment, allowing no luxuries 5 or anything else unnecessary, and so we were able to move off the field when ordered, with our ovm transporta- tion, leaving nothing behind. I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment; but it does seem to me that there never was a regiment lo better worth bragging about than ours. Wood was an exceptional commander, of great power, with a remarkable gift for organization. The rank and file were as fine natural fighting men as ever carried a rifle or rode a horse in any country or any age. We had a number of first- 15 class young fellows from the East, most of them from colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; but the great majority of the men were Southwesterners, from the then Territories of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico. They were accustomed to the use 2a of firearms, accustomed to taking care of themselves in the open; they were intelligent and self-reliant; they possessed hardihood and endurance and physical prowess; and, above all, they had the fighting edge, the cool and resolute fighting temper. They went into the war with 25 full knowledge, having deliberately counted the cost. In the great majority of cases each man was chiefly anxious to find out what he should do to make the regiment a success. They bought, first and last, about 800 copies of the cavalry drill regulations and studied them industri- 30 ously. Such men were practically soldiers to start with, m all the essentials. It is small wonder that with them as 64 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS material to work upon the regiment was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, sent on trains to Tampa, embarked, dis- embarked, and put through two victorious offensive — not defensive — fights in which a third of the officers and one- 5 fifth of the men were killed or wounded, all within sixty days. It is a good record,^ and it speaks well for the men of the regiment; and it speaks well for Wood. THE PRESIDENCY On September 6, 1901, President McKiiiley° was shot by an Anarchist in the city of Buffalo. I went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition seemed to be improv- ing, and after a day or two we were told that he was practically out of danger. I then joined my family, who 5 were in the Adirondacks, near the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the afternoon I climbed Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top I had descended a few hundred feet to a shelf of land where there was a little lake, when I lo saw a guide coming out of the woods on our trail from be- low. I felt at once that he had bad news, and, sure enough, he handed me a telegram saying that the President's con- dition was much worse and that I must come to Buffalo immediately. It was late in the afternoon, and darkness i5 had fallen by the time I reached the club-house where we were staying. It was some time afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the nearest railway station, North Creek, some forty or fifty miles distant. The roads were the ordinary wilderness roads and the night was dark. 20 But we changed horses two or three times — when I say ^^we'' I mean the driver and I, as there was no one else wdth us — and reached the station just at dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb,° who had a special train waiting, that the President was dead. That evening I took the oath of 25 office, in the house of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo. I at once announced that I would continue unchanged McKinley's poUcies for the honor and prosperity of the 65 66 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS country, and asked all the members of the Cabinet to stay. There were no changes made among them save as changes were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. I continued Mr. McKinley's policies, 5 changing and developing them and adding new poHcies only as the questions before the public changed and as the needs of the public developed. Some of my friends shook their heads over this, telling me that the men I retained would not be ^4oyal to me,'^ and that I 10 would seem as if I were ^^a pale copy of McKinley.'^ I told them that I was not nervous on this score, and that if the men I retained were loyal to their work they would be gi\dng me the loyalty for which I most cared: and that if they were not, I would change them anyhow; and that 15 as for being ^'a pale copy of McKinley,'' I was not pri- marily concerned with either following or not following in his footsteps, but in facing the new problems that arose; and that if I were competent I would find ample oppor- tunity to show my competence by my deeds° without 20 worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact. OUTDOORS AND INDOORS There are men who love out-of-doors who yet never open a book; and other men who love books but to whom the great book of nature is a sealed volume, and the lines written therein blurred and illegible. Nevertheless, among those men whom I have known, the love of books 5 and the love of outdoors, in their highest expressions, have usually gone hand in hand. It is an affectation for the man who is praising outdoors to sneer at books. Us- ually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in nature is to be found in those who have also profited by the lo hoarded and recorded wisdom of their fellow-men. Love of outdoor life, love of simple and hardy pastimes, can be gratified by men and women who do not possess large means, and who work hard; and so can love of good books — not of good bindings and of first editions, excellent enough 15 in their way but sheer luxuries — I mean love of reading books, owning them if possible of course, but, if that is not possible, getting them from a circulating library. Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who, as chief of his little tribe, signed away his 20 rights to the land two centuries and a half ago. The house stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over the bay and the Sound. We see the sun go down beyond long reaches of land and of water. Many 25 birds dwell in the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods near by, and of course in winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the bay and the Sound. We love all the seasons : the snows and bare woods 67 , 68 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS of winter; the rush of growing things and the blossom- spray of spring; the yellow grain, the ripening fruits and tasseled corn, and the deep, leafy shades that are heralded b}^ 'Hhe green dance of summer; ^' and the sharp fall winds 5 that tear the briUiant banners with which the trees greet the dying year. The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights we watch it from the piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall River boats as they steam steadily by. Now and then we 10 spend a day on it, the two of us together in the light row- ing skiff, or J)erhaps with one of the boys to pull an extra pair of oars; we land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit of white sand, while the sails of the coast- is ing schooners gleam in the sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the waters. Long Island is not as rich in flowers as the valley of the Hudson. Yet there are many. Early in April there is one hillside near us which glows like a tender flame with 20 the white of the bloodroot. About the same time we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus; and although we rarely pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul hungers for the 25 Northern spring. Then there are shad-blow and delicate anemones, about the time of the cherry blossoms; the brief glory of the apple orchards follows; and then the thronging dog-woods fill the forests with their radiance; and so flowers follow flowers until the springtime splendor 30 closes with the laurel and the evanescent, honey sweet locust bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 69 and pale beach rosemary; and the goldenrod and the as- ters when the afternoons shorten and we again begin to think of fires in the wide fire-places. Most of the birds in our neighborhood are the ordinary home friends of the house and the barn, the wood lot and 5 the pasture; but now and then the species make queer sliifts. The cheery quail, alas! are rarely found near us now; and we no longer hear the whippoorwills at night. But some birds visit us now which formerly did not. When I was a boy neither the black-throated green warbler nor lo the purple finch nested around us, nor were bobolinks found in our fields. The black-throated gi^een warbler is now one of our commonest summer warblers; there are plenty of purple finches; and, best of all, the bobolinks are far from infrequent. I had written about these new visit- i5 ors to John Burroughs,^ and once when he came out to see me I was able to shov/ them to him. When I was President, we owned a little house in west- em Virginia; a delightful house, to us at least, although only a shell of rough boards. We used sometimes to go 20 there in the fall, perhaps at Thanksgiving, and on these occasions we would have quail and rabbits of our own shooting, and once in a while a wild turkey. We also went there in the spring. Of course many of the birds were different from our Long Island friends. There were 25 mocking-birds, the most attractive of all birds, and blue grosbeaks, and cardinals and summer redbirds instead of scarlet tanagers, and those wonderful singers the Bewick^s wrens, and Carolina wrens. All these I was able to show John Burroughs when he came to visit us; although, by 30 the way, he did not appreciate as much as we did one set of inmates of the cottage — the flying squirrels. We loved 70 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS having the flying squirrels, father and mother and half- grown young, in their nest among the rafters; and at night we slept so soundly that we did not in the least mind the wild gambols of the little fellows through the rooms, seven when, as sometimes happened, they would swoop down to the bed and scuttle across it. One April I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep, and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of the Park, the wild 10 creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and tolerant of human presence. In the Yellowstone the animals seem always to behave as one wishes them lo! It is always possible to see the sheep and deer and ante- lope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer than 15 the smaller beasts. In April we found the elk weak after the short commons and hard li\dng of winter. Once ^\dth- out much difficulty I regularly rounded up a big band of them, so that John Burroughs could look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much as 20 1 did. The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl the size of a robin which we saw perched on the top of a tree in mid-afternoon entirely uninfluenced by the sun and making a queer noise like a cork being pulled from a bottle. I was rather ashamed to find how much better 25 his eyes were than mine in seeing the birds and grasping their differences. When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport, but also by the strange new birds and other 30 creatures, and the trees and flowers I had not known before. By the way, there was one feast at the White House which stands above all others in my memory — even above the OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 71 time when I lured Joel Chandler Harris'' thither for a night, a deed in which to triumph, as all who knew that inveter- ately shy recluse will testify. This was ''the bear-hunters' dinner.'^ I had been treated so kindly by my friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom 1 5 was so pxoud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them at a hunters' dinner at the White House. One December I succeeded; there were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring riders, as first-class citizens as could be found anywhere; no finer lo set of guests ever sat at meat in the White House; and among other game on the table was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same guests. When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the ''big trees/' the Sequoias,^ and then to travel i5 down into the Yosemite with John Muir.° Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when EmerSon° came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with him, for that was the only 20 way in which to see at their best the majesty and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and could not go. John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days' trip. The first night was clear, and 25 we lay down in the darkening isles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in 30 the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music, at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find 72 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared Httle for birds or bird songs, and knew httle about them. The hermit thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he no- 5 ticed or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the water-ousels — always particular favorites of mine too. The second night we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the canyon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver firs; and next day v/e went down 10 into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall alwa}^ be glad that I \\as in the Yosemite \vith John Muir and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs. Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes; they sing not only in the early morning but throughout the 15 long, hot June afternoons. Sometimes they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the catbirds ever3'w^here. The catbirds have 20 such an attractive song that it is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheer>^ music of the robins always seems typical of the bold, cheer\^ birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest in the young elms around the house, 25 and the orchard orioles in the apple trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow- lark— to us one of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of 30 late years now and then we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures back of the barn; OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 75 and when the full chorus of these and of many other of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot- weather songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo bunt- ings and thistle-finches. Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs is that of the bush- 5 sparrow — I do not know why the books call it field- sparrow, for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesper-finch, the savannah-sparrow, and the grasshopper- sparrow, but among the cedars and bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie war- lo bier is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. We love to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their number which, as occasionally happens, is bold enough to wake us in the early morning by drum- ming on the shingles of the roof. In our ears the red-winged is blackbirds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high over- head, and even the calls of the night heron that nest in the tall water maples by one of the wood ponds on our place, and the little green herons that nest beside the salt marsh. 20 It is hard to tell just how much of the attraction in any bird-note lies in the music itself and how much in the associations. This is w^hat makes it so useless to try to compare the bird songs of one countrj^with those of another. A man who is worth anything can no more be entirely 25 impartial in speaking of the bird-songs with which from his earliest childhood he has been familiar than he can be entirely impartial in speaking of his ow^n family. At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things — birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses 30 and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs roar and 74 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS " crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for the hot, still afternoons of summer. The books are everywhere. There are as many in the north room and in the parlor — is drawing-room a more 5 appropriate name than parlor? — as in the library; the gun- room at the top of the house, which incidentally has the loveliest view of all, contains more books than any of the other rooms; and they are particularly delightful books to browse among, just because they have not much rele- lovance to one another, this being one of the reasons why they are relegated to their present abode. But the books have overflowed into all the other rooms too. I could not name any principle upon which the books have been gathered. Books are almost as individual as 15 friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the book-lover's besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe° calls "the mad pride of intellectuahty,'^ taking the shape 20 of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books. Of course there are books which a man or woman uses as instruments of a profession — law books, medical books, cookerj^ books, and the like. I am not speaking of these, for they are not properly "books'' at 25 all; they come in the category of time-tables, telephone directories, and other useful agencies of civilized life. I am speaking of books that are meant to be read. Personally, granted that these books are decent and healthy, the one test to which I demand that they all submit is that of 30 being interesting. If the book is not interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesimal number of cases it OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 75 gives scant benefit to the reader. Of course any reader ought to cultivate his or her taste so that good books will appeal to it, and that trash won't. But after this point has once been reached, the needs of each reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal to those needs. Personally 5 the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by- product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment. lo Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes in which he cannot expect that any but a few friends will share. Now, I am very proud of my big-game library. I suppose there must be many big-game libraries in Con- tinental Europe, and possibly in England more extensive is than mine, but I have not happened to come across any such library in this country. Some of the originals go back to the sixteenth century, and there are copies or reproductions of the two or three most famous hunting books of the Middle Ages, such as the Duke of York's 20 translation of Gaston Phoebus, ° and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilian. ° It is only very occasionally that I meet any one who cares for any of these books. On the other hand, I expect to find many friends who will turn naturally to some of the old or the new books of poetry or 2 3 romance or history to which we of the household habit- ually turn. Let me add that ours is in no sense a collect- or's library. Each book was procured because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were 3 ) too much interested in their insides. 76 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS Now and then I am asked as to ^Vhat books a states- man should read/^ and my answer is, poetry and novels — including short stories under the head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern poetry. 5 If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosoph}^; and realh'- good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in 10 prose or verse. Gibbon° and Macaulay,° Herodotus,° Thuc3^dides° and Tacitus,^ the Heimskringla,^ Froissart,° Joinville° and Villehardouin,° Parkman° and Mahan,° Mommsen° and Ranke° — why! there are scores and scores of sohd histories, the best in the world, W'^hich are as ab- 15 sorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as permanant value. The same thing is true of Darwin"" and Huxley° and Carlyle° and Emerson,° and parte of Kant,° and of volumes Hke Sutherland's"^ " Growth of the Moral Instinct,'' or Acton' s° Essays and Lounsbury's° studies — here again I 20 am not tr^dng to class books together, or measure one by another, or enmnerate one in a thousand of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in some hne or other of serious thought, scientific or historical or 25 philosophical or economic or governmental, find any num- ber of books which are charming to read, and which in addition give that for which liis or her soul hungers. I do not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to read a great many different books of this character, just 30 as every one else should read them. But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of what OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 77 is good in old things^ all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imagiiiative writers, w^hether of prose or of poetry. 5 The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred, Best Books,° or the Five-Foot Library. ° It lo is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an ex- cellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular 15 trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending 20 over a number of years. Milton° is best for one mood and Pope° for another. Because a man likes Whitman^ or Browning^ or Low^ell° he should not feel himself debarred from Tennyson° or Kipling° or Korner° or Heine° or the Bard of the Dimbovitza.° Tolstoy's^ novels are good at one 25 time and those of Sienkiewicz° at another; and he is fortu- nate who can relish '' Salaimnbo '' ° and '' Tom Brown ^^ ° and the '' Two Admirals '' ° and '^ Quentin Durward" ° and '' Artemus Ward '' ° and the '' Ingoldsby Legends '' ° and '' Pickwick ^^° and ''Vanity Fair.^^ ° Why, there 30 are hundreds of books hke these, each one of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom it 78 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS happens to appeal, will enable that person quite uncon- sciously to furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the battle of life. A book must be interesting to the particular reader at 5 that particular time. But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no mes- sage at other times. The reader, the book-lover, must meet 10 his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treat- is ing mere individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyn- crasy as a matter of pride. I happen to be devoted to ]\iacbeth,° whereas I very seldom read Hamlet° (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely con- scious that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and 20 yet it would not do me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as a matter of fact, I don't. Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of books which one person will find delightful, and which 25 he certainly ought not to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the beloved volume. There is on our book-shelves a little pre- Victorian novel or tale called ^^The Semi- Attached Couple.'' It is told with much humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; 30 and to me it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my own family I have never met a human OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 79 being who had even heard of it, and I don^t suppose I ever shall meet one. I often enjoy a story by some living author so much that I write to tell him so — or to tell her so; and at least half the time I regret my action, because it encourages the writer to believe that the public shares my 5 views, and he then finds that the public doesn^t. Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books. Sag- amore Hill is one of three neighboring houses in which small cousins spent very happy years of childhood. In the lo three houses there were at one time sixteen of these small cousins, all told, and once we ranged them in order of size and took their photograph. There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railway is man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a WTiter, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of chil- dren, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all 20 other forms of success and achievement lose their impor- tance by comparison. It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, 25 the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: '^Do30 what you can, with what youVe got, where you are.'' 80 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS The country is the place for children, and if not the country, a city small enough so that one can get out into the country. When our own children were httle, we were for several winters in Washington, and each Sunday after- 5 noon the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which was then very real country indeed. I would drag one of the children's wagons; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired of trudging bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side trips after flowers and other treasures, 10 the owners would clamber into the wagon. One of these wagons, by the way, a gorgeous red one, had '^ Express'' painted on it in gilt letters, and was known to the younger children as the '^'spress" wagon. They evidently as- sociated the color with the term. Once while we were at 15 Sagamore something happened to the cherished ^^'spress" wagon, to the distress of the children, and especially of the child who owned it. Their mother and I were just start- ing for a drive in the buggy, and we promised the bereaved owner that we would visit a store we knew .in East Nor- 20wich, a village a few miles away, and bring back another ^"spress" wagon. When we reached the store, we found to our dismay that the wagon which we had seen had been sold. We could not bear to return without the promised gift, for we knew that the brains of small persons are much 25 puzzled when their elders seem to break promises. For- tunately, we saw in the store a delightful little bright-red chair and bright-red table, and these we brought home and handed solemnly over to the expectant recipient, explain- ing that as there unfortunately was not a ^^'spress" wagon 30 we had brought him back a ^^'spress" chair and "'spress" table. It worked beautifully! The ^^'spress" chair and table were received with such rapture that we had to get OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 81 duplicates for the other small member of the family who was the particular crony of the proprietor of the new treasures. When their mother and I returned from a row, we would often see the children waiting for us, running like sand- spiders along the beach. They always liked to swim ins company with a grown-up of buoyant temperament and inventive mind, and the float offered limitless opportu- nities for enjoyment while bathing. All dutiful parents know the game of '^stage-coach^'; each child is given a name, such as the whip, the nigh leader, the off-wheeler, lo the old lady passenger, and, under penalty of paying a forfeit, must get up and turn round when the grown-up, who is improvishing a thrilling story, mentions that par- ticular object; and when the word '^ stage-coach '^ is men- tioned, everybody has to get up and turn round. Well, we i6 used to play stage-coach on the float while in swimming, and instead of tamely getting up and turning round, the child whose turn it was had to plunge overboard. When I mentioned "stage-coach," the water fairly foamed with vigorously kicking little legs; and then there was always 20 a moment of interest while I counted, so as to be sure that the number of heads that came up corresponded with the number of children who had gone down. No man or woman will ever forget the time when some child lies sick of a disease that threatens its Hfe. More- 25 over, much less serious sickness is unpleasant enough at the time. Looking back, however, there are elements of comedy in certain of the less serious cases. I well remem- ber one such instance which occurred when we were living in Washington, in a small house, with barely enough room 30 for everybody when all the chinks were filled. Measles b_ ROOSEVELTS V/RITIXGS descended on the household. In the effort to keep the children that were well and those that were sick apart, their mother and I had to camp out in improvised fash- ion. When the eldest small boy was getting well, and had 5 recovered his spirits, I slept on a sofa beside his bed — the sofa being so short that my feet projected over anyhow. One afternoon a toy organ was given to the small boy by a sympathetic friend. Next morning early I was waked to find the small boy very vivacious and requesting a 10 story. Having drowsily told the story, I said, ^^Now, father^s told you a story, so you amuse yourself and let father go to sleep; '^ to which the small boy responded most \drtuously, ^'Yes, father will go to sleep and I'll play the organ," which he did, at a distance of two feet from my 15 head. Later his sister, who had just come down with the measles, was put into the same room. The small boy was convalescing, and was engaged in playing on the floor with some tin ships, together with two or three paste- board monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He 20 was giving a vivid rendering of Farragut° at Mobile Bay, from memories of how I told the story. My pasteboard rams and monitors were fascinating — if a naval architect may be allowed to praise his own work — and as property they were equally divided between the little girl and the 25 small boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from the bed, for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on the floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight, which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected that her 30 monitor was destined to play the part of victim. Little boy. "And then they steamed bang into the monitor." OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 83 Little girl. '^Brother, don^t you sink my monitor!" Little hoy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the climax). ^'And the torpedo went at the monitor!" Little girl. "My monitor is not to sink! " Little boy J dramatically. "And bang the monitor sank! " s Little girl. "It didn^t do any such thing. My monitor always goes to bed at seven, and it's now quarter past. My monitor was in bed and couldn't sink! " When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard Wood and I used often to combine forces and take both lo families of children out to walk, and occasionally some of their playmates. Leonard Wood's son, I found, attributed the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me. Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a fallen tree. I was standing on the middle of the log trying is to prevent any of the children from falling off, and while making a clutch at one peculiarly active and heedless child I fell off myself. As I emerged from the water I heard the little Wood boy calling frantically to the General: "Oh! oh! The father of all the children fell into 20 the creek!" — which made me feel like an uncommonly moist patriarch. There could be no healthier and pleasanter place in which to bring up children than in that nook of old-time America around Sagamore Hill. Certainly I never knew 25 small people to have a better time or a better training for their work in after life than the three families of cousins at Sagamore Hill. It was real country, and— speaking from the somewhat detached point of view of the mascu- line parent — I should say there was just the proper mix- 30 ture of freedom and control in the management of the 84 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS children. They were never allowed to be disobedient or to shirk lessons or work; and they were encouraged to have all the fun possible. They often went barefoot, especially during the many hours passed in various en- 5 thralling pursuits along and in the waters of the bay. They swam, they tramped, they boated, they coasted and skated in winter, they were intimate friends with the cows, chickens, pigs, and other live stock. They had in succession two ponies, General Grant and, when the 10 General's legs became such tliat he lay down too often and too unexpectedly in the road, a calico pony named Algon- quin, who is still living a life of honorable leisure in the stable and in the pasture — where he has to be picketed, because otherwise he chases the cows. Sedate pony Grant 15 used to draw the cart in which the children went driving when they were very small, the driver being their old nurse Mame, who had held their mother in her arms when she was born, and who was knit to them by a tie as close as any tie of blood. I doubt whether I ever saw Mame 20 really offended with them except once when, out of pure but misunderstood affection, they named a pig after her! They loved pony Grant. Once I saw the then little boy of three hugging pony Grant's fore legs. As he leaned over, his broad straw hat tilted on end, and pony Grant medi- 25tatively munched the brim; whereupon the small boy looked up with a wail of anguish, evidently thinking the pony had decided to treat him like a radish. The children had pets of their own, too, of course. Among them guinea pigs were the stand-bys — ^their highly 3C unemotional nature fits them for companionship with ador- ing but over-enthusiastic young masters and mistresses. Then there were flying squirrels, and kangaroo rats, gentle OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 86 and trustful, and a badger whose temper was short but whose nature was fundamentally friendly. The badger^s name was Josiah; the particular Httle boy whose property he was used to carry him about, clasped firmly around what would have been his waist if he had had any. Inas- 5 much as when on the ground the badger would play energetic games of tag with the little boy and nip his bare legs, I suggested that it would be uncommonly disagree- able if he took advantage of being held in the little boy's arms to bite his face; but this suggestion was repelled lo with scorn as an unworthy assault on the character of Josiah. "He bites legs sometimes, but he never bites faces,'' said the little boy. We also had a young black bear whom the children christened Jonathan Edwards,"^ partly out of compliment 15 to their mother, who was descended from that great Puritan divine, and partly because the bear possessed a temper in which gloom and strength were combined in what the children regarded as Calvinistic proportions. As for the dogs, of course there were many, and during their 20 lives they were intimate and valued family friends, and their deaths were household tragedies. One of them, a large yellow animal of several good breeds and valuable rather because of psychical than physical traits, was named "Susan" by his small owners, in commemoration 25 of another retainer, a white cow; the fact that the cow and the dog were not of the same sex being treated with indiff- erence. Much the most individual of the dogs and the one with the strongest character was Sailor Boy, a Chespeake Bay dog. He had a masterful temper and a strong sense 30 of both dignity and duty. He would never let the other dogs fight, and he himself ne^^er fought unless circumstances 86 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS imperatively demanded it; but he was a murderous animal when he did fight. He was not only exceedingly fond of the water, as was to be expected, but passionately devoted to gunpowder in every form, for he loved firearms and fairly 5 reveled in the Fourth of July celebrations — the latter being rather hazardous occasions, as the children strongly ob- jected to any ^^safe and sane^' element being injected into them, and had the normal number of close shaves with rockets, Roman candles, and firecrackers. 10 One of the stand-bys for enjojmaent, especially in rainy weather,was the old bam. This had been built nearly a cen- tury previously, and was as deUghtful as only the pleasant- est kind of old barn can be. It stood at the meeting-spot of three fences. A favorite amusement used to be an obstacle 15 race when the barn was full of hay. The contestants were timed and were started successively from outside the door. They rushed inside, clambered over or burrowed through the hay, as suited them best, dropped out of a place where a loose board had come off, got over, through, or under the 20 three fences, and raced back to the starting point. When they were little, their respective fathers were expected also to take part in the obstacle race, and when with the ad- vance of years the fathers finally refused to be contestants, there was a general feeling of pained regret among the 25 children at such a decline in the sporting spirit. Another famous place for handicap races was Cooper's Bluff, a gigantic sand-bank rising from the edge of the bay, a mile from the house. If the tide was high there was an added thrill, for some of the contestants were sure 30 to run into the water. As soon as the little boys learned to swim they were OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 87 allowed to go off by themselves in rowboats and camp out for the night along the Sound. Sometimes I would go along so as to take the smaller children. Once a schooner was wrecked on a point half a dozen miles away. She held together well for a season or two after having been 5 cleared of everything down to the timbers, and this gave us a chance to make camping-out trips in which the girls could also be included, for we put them to sleep in the wreck, while the boys slept on the shore: squaw picnics, the children called them. lo We had a sleigh for winter; but if, when there was much snow, the whole family desired to go somewhere, we would put the body of the farm wagon on runners and all bundle in together. We always liked snow at Christmas time, and the sleigh-ride down to the church on Christmas eve. 15 One of the hymns always sung at this Christmas eve festival begins, ''It's Christmas eve on the river, it's Christ- mas eve on the bay.'' All good natives of the village firmly believed that this h^min was written here, and with direct reference to Oyster Bay; although if such were the 20 case the word ''river" would have to be taken in a hyper- bolic sense, as the nearest approach to a river is the vil- lage pond. I used to share this belief myself, until my faith was shaken by a Denver lady who wrote that she had sung that hymn when a child in Michigan, and that 25 at the present time her little Denver babies also loved it, although in their case the river was not represented by even a village pond. As the children grew up. Sagamore Hill remained de- lightful for them. There were picnics and riding parties 30 88 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS there were dances in the north room — sometimes fancy dress dances — and open air plays on the green tennis court of one of the cousin^s houses. The children are no longer children now. Most of them are men and women, 5 working out their own fates in the big world; some in our land, others across the great ocean or where the South- ern Cross blazes in the tropic night. Some of them have children of their own; some are working at one thing, some at another; in cable ships, in business offices, in 10 factories, in newspaper offices, building steel bridges, bossing gravel trains and steam shovels, or laying tracks and superintending freight traffic. They have had their share of accidents and escapes; as I write, word comes from a far-off land that one of them, whom Seth Bullock 15 used to call ^^Kim^' ° because he was the friend of all man- kind, while bossing a dangerous but necessary steel structural job, has had two ribs and two back teeth broken, and is back at work. They have known and they will know joy and sorrow, triumph and temporary defeat. 20 But I believe they are all the better off because of their happy and healthy childhood. It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. No father and mother can 25 hope to escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are dread- ful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are many forms of success, many forms of triumph. 30 But there is no other success, that in any shape or way approaches that which is open to most of the many, many men and women who have the right ideals. These are OUTDOORS AND INDOORS 89 the men and the women who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most. They are the men and women who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and only to those whose joy in life springs in part from 5 power of work and sense of duty. mSTORY THE BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES ^ Along the western frontier of the colonies that were so soon to be the United States, among the foothills of the Alleghanies, on the slopes of the wooded mountains, and in the long trough-like valleys that lay between the ranges, dwelt a peculiar and characteristically Americans people. . These frontier folk, the people of the up-country, or back-country, who lived near and among the forest-clad mountains, far away from the long-settled districts of flat coast plain and sluggish tidal river, were known to lo themselves and to others as backwoodsmen. They all bore a strong likeness to one another in their habits of thought and ways of living, and differed markedly from the people of the older and more civilized communities to the eastward. The western border of our country was is then formed by the great barrier-chain o of the Alleghanies, which ran north and south from Pennsylvania through Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the trend of the valleys being parallel to the seacoast, and the mountains rising highest to the southward. It was difficult to cross 20 the ranges from east to west, but it was both easy and natural to follow the valleys between. From Fort Pitt° to the high hill-homes of the Cherokees° this great tract of wooded and mountainous country possessed nearly the same features and characteristics, differing utterly 25 in physical aspect from the alluvial plains bordering the ocean. ^Reprinted by permission from The Winning of the West, copyrighted by G. P. Putnam's Sons. 93 94 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS So, likewise, the backwoods mountaineers who dwelt near the great water-shed that separates the Atlantic streams from the springs of the Watauga, the Kanawha, and the Monongahela, were all cast in the same mould, sand resembled each other much more than any of them did their immediate neighbors of the plains. The back- woodsmen of Pennsylvania had little in common with the peaceful population of Quakers^ and Germans who lived between the Delaware and the Susquehanna; and 10 their near kinsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains were separated by an equally wide gulf from the aristocratic planter communities that flourished in the tide-water regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Near the coast the lines of division between 15 the colonies corresponded fairly well with the differences between the populations; but after striking the foot-hills, though the political boundaries continued to go east and west, those both of ethnic and of physical significance began to run north and south. 20 The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and par- entage, and of mixed race; but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish — the Scotch-Irish,^ as they were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead^ and the Cavalier^ for 25 their leadership in our history; nor have we been alto- gether blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Hugue- not ;° but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people, the Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of 3oKnox° and Calvin°. These Irish representatives of the Covenanters^ were in the West almost what the Puritans were in the Northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were BACKWOODISMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 95 in the South. Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they nevertheless formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers, who, with axes and rifle, won their way from the Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a mixed people. Though mainly descended from Scotch ancestors who came originally from both lowlands and highlands, lo from among both the Scotch Saxons and the Scotch Celts, — many of them were of English, a few of French Huguenot, and quite a number of true old Milesian Irish° extraction. They were the Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and despised the Catholics, whom their ancestors had is conquered, and regarded the Episcopalians, by whom they themselves had been oppressed, with a more sullen, but scarcely less intense, hatred. They were a truculent and obstinate people, and gloried in the warlike renown of their forefathers, the men who had followed Cromwell,°20 and who had shared in the defence of Derry° and in the victories of the Boyne° and Aughrim.° They did not begin to come to America in any numbers till after the opening of the eighteenth century; by 1730 they were fairly swarming across the ocean for the most 25 part in two streams, the larger going to the port of Philadelphia, the smaller to the port of Charleston. Pushing through the long-settled lowlands of the sea- coast, they at once made their abode at the foot of the mountains and became the outposts of civilization. From 30 Pennsylvania, whither the great majority had come, they drifted south along the foothills, and down the long valleys. 96 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS till they met their brethren from Charleston who had pushed up into the Carolina back-country. In this land of hills, covered by unbroken forest, they took root and flourished, stretching in a broad belt from north to south, 5 a shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the seaboard and the red warriors of the wilderness. All through this region they were alike; they had as little kinship with the Cavalier as with the Quaker; the West was won by those who have been rightly called the Round- 10 heads of the South, the same men who, before any others, declared for American independence.^ The two facts of most importance to remember in deal- ing with our pioneer history are, first, that the western portions of Virginia and the Carolinas were peopled by 15 an entirely different stock from that which had long existed in the tide-water regions of those colonies; and, secondly, that, except for those in the Carolinas who came from Charleston, the immigrants of this stock were mostly from the North, from their great breeding-ground and 20 nursery in western Pennsylvania. That these Irish Presbyterians were a bold and hardy race is proved by their at once pushing past the settled regions, and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders of the white advance. They were the first and last set of 25 immigrants to do this ; all others have merely followed in the wake of their predecessors. But, indeed, they were fitted to be Americans from the very start; they were kins- folk of the Covenanters; they deemed it a rehgious duty to interpret their own Bible, and held for a divine right the 30 election of their own clergy. For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been fundamen- tally democratic. In the hard life of the frontier they lost BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 97 much of their reUgion, and they had but scant opportunity to give their children the schoohng in which they beUeved ; but what few meeting-houses and school-houses there were on the border were theirs. The numerous families of colonial English who came among them adopted their re- 5 ligion if they adopted any. The creed of the backwoods- man who had a creed at all was Presbyterianism; for the Episcopacy of the tide-water lands obtained no foothold in the mountains, and the Methodists and Baptists had but just begun to appear in the West when the Revolution lo broke out. These Presbyterian Irish were, however, far from being the only settlers on the border, although more than any others they impressed the stamp of their peculiar character on the pioneer civilization of the West and Southwest, is Great numbers of immigrants of English descent came among them from the settled districts on the East; and though these later arrivals soon became indistinguishable from the people among whom they settled, yet they cer- tainly sometimes added a tone of their own to backwoods 20 society, giving it here and there a slight dash of what we are accustomed to consider the distinctively southern or cavaHer spirit. There was likewise a large German ad- mixture not only from the Germans of Pennsylvania, but also from those of the Carolinas. A good many Huguenots 25 likewise came, and a few Hollanders and even Swedes, from the banks of the Delaware, or perhaps from farther off still. A single generation, passed under the hard conditions of life in the wilderness, was enough to weld together into 30 one people the representatives of these numerous and widely different races; and the children of the next gener- 98 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS ation became indistinguishable from one another. Long be- fore the first Continental Congress assembled, the back- woodsmen, whatever their blood, had become Americans, one in speech, thought, and character, clutching firmly the 5 land in which their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They had lost all remembrance of Europe and all sjmipathy with things European; they had become as emphatically products native to the soil as were the tough and supple hickories out of which they fashioned the 10 handles of their long, light axes. Their grim, harsh, narrow lives were yet strangely fascinating and full of adventurous toil and danger; none but natures as strong, as freedom-loving, and as full of bold defiance as theirs could have endured existence on the terms which these 15 men found pleasurable. Their iron surroundings made a mould which turned out all alike in the same shape. They resembled one another, and they differed from the rest of the world — even the world of America, and infinitely more, the world of Europe — in dress, in customs, and in 20 mode of life. Where their lands abutted on the more settled districts to the eastward, the population was of course thickest, and their peculiarities least. Here and there at such points they built small backwoods burgs or towns, rude, strag- 25 gling, unkempt villages, with a store or two, a tavern, — sometimes good, often a^^ scandalous hog-sty,'^ where trav- ellers were devoured by fleas, and every one slept and ate in oneroom, — asmall log school-house, and a little church,pre- sided over by a hard-featured Presbyterian preacher, gloomy, 30 earnest, and zealous, probably bigoted and narrow-minded, but nevertheless a great power for good in the community. However, the backwoodsmen as a class neither built BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 99 towns nor loved to dwell therein. They were to be seen at their best in the vast, interminable forests that formed their chosen home. They won and kept their lands by force, and ever lived either at w^ar or in dread of war. Hence they settled always in groups of several families 5 each, all banded together for mutual protection. Their red foes were strong and terrible, cunning in council, dreadful in battle, merciless beyond belief in victory. The men of the border did not overcome and dispossess cowards and weaklings; they marched forth to spoil the stout- lo hearted and to take for a prey the possessions of the men of might. Every acre, every rood of ground which they claimed had to be cleared by the axe and held w4th the rifle. Not only was the chopping down of the forests the first preliminary to cultivation, but it was also the surest io means of subduing the Indians, to whom the unending stretches of choked woodland w^ere an impenetrable cover behind which to move unseen, a shield in making assaults, and a strong tower of defence in repelling counter-attacks. In the conquest of the West the backwoods axe, shapely, 20 well-poised, with long haft and light head, was a servant hardly standing second even to the rifle; the two were the national weapons of the American backwoodsman, and in their use he has never been excelled. When a group of families moved out into the wilderness 25 they built themselves a station or stockade fort: a square palisade of upright logs, loop-holed, with strong block- houses as bastions at the comers. One side at least was generally formed by the backs of the cabins themselves, all standing in a row; and there was a great door or gate, 30 that could be strongly barred in case of need. Often no iron whatever was employed in any of the buildings. The 100 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS square inside contained the provision sheds and frequently a strong central blockhouse as well. These forts, of course, could not stand against cannon, and they were always in danger when attacked with fire; but save for 5 this risk of burning they were very effectual defences against men without artillery, and were rarely taken, whether by whites or Indians, except by surprise. Few other buildings have played so important a part in our history as the rough stockade fort of the backwoods. 10 The families only lived in the fort when there was war with the Indians, and even then not in the winter. At other times they all separated out to their owtl farms, universally called clearings, as they were always made b}^ first cutting off the timber. The stumps were left to dot U the fields of grain and Indian corn. The corn in especial was the stand-by and invariable resource of the western settler; it was the crop on which he relied to feed his family, and when hunting or on a war-trail the parched grains were carried in his leather wallet to serve often as 20 his only food. But he planted orchards and raised melons, potatoes, and many other fruits and vegetables as well; and he had usually a horse or two, cows, and perhaps hogs and sheep, if the wolves and bears did not interfere. If he was poor his cabin was made of unhewn logs, and held 25 but a single room; if well-to-do, the logs were neatly hewed, and besides the large living- and eating-room with its huge stone fireplace, there was also a small bedroom and a kitchen, while a ladder led to the loft above, in which the boys slept. The floors were made of puncheons, 30 great slabs of wood hewed carefully out, and the roof of clapboards. Pegs of wood were thrust into the sides of the house, to serve instead of a wardrobe; and buck BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 101 antlers, thrust into joists, held the ever-ready rifles. The table was a great clapboard set on four wooden legs; there were three-legged stools, and in the better sort of houses old-fashioned rocking-chairs. The couch or bed was warmly covered with blankets, bearskins, and deer-hides. 5 These clearings lay far apart from one another in the wilderness. Up to the door-sills of the log-huts stretched the solemn and mysterious forest. There were no openings to break its continuity; nothing but endless leagues on leagues of shadowy, wolf-haunted woodland. The great lo trees towered aloft till their separate heads were lost in the mass of foliage above, and the rank underbrush choked the spaces between the trunks. On the higher peaks and ridge-crests of the mountains there were straggling birches and pines, hemlocks and balsam firs; elsewhere, oaks, is chestnuts, hickories, maples, beeches, walnuts, and great tulip-trees grew side by side with many other kinds. The sunlight could not penetrate the roofed archway of mur- muring leaves; through the gray aisles of the forest men walked always in a kind of midday gloaming. Those who 20 had lived in the open plains felt when they came to the backwoods as if their heads were hooded. Save on the border of a lake, from a cliff-top, or on a bald knob — that is, a bare hill-shoulder, — they could not any^vhere look out for any distance. 25 All the land was shrouded in one vast forest. It covered the mountains from crest to river-bed, filled the plains, and stretched in sombre and melancholy wastes towards the Mississippi. All that it contained, all that lay hid within it and beyond it, none could tell; men only knew 30 that their boldest hunters, however deeply they had pene- trated, had not yet gone through it, that it was the home 102 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS of the game they followed and the wild beasts that preyed on their flocks, and that deep in its tangled depths lurked their red foes, hawk-eyed and wolf -hearted. Backwoods society was simple, and the duties and rights 5 of each member of the family were plain and clear. The man was the armed protector and provider, the bread- winner; the woman was the housewife and child-bearer. They married young and their families were large, for they were strong and healthy, and their success in life 10 depended on their own stout arms and willing hearts. There was everywhere great equality of conditions. Land was plenty and all else scarce; so courage, thrift and in- dustry were sure of their reward. All had small farms, with the few stock necessary to cultivate them; the farms 15 being generally placed in the hollows, the division lines between them, if they were close together, being the tops of the ridges and the watercourses, especially the former. The buildings of each farm were usually at its lowest point, as if in the centre of an amphitheater. Each was 20 on an average of about four hundred acres, but sometimes more. Tracts of low, swampy grounds, possibly some miles from the cabin, were cleared for meadows, the fodder being stacked, and hauled home in winter. Each backwoodsman was not only a small farmer but 25 also a hunter; for his wife and children depended for their meat upon the venison and bear's flesh procured by his rifle. The people were restless and always on the move. After being a little while in a place, some of the men would settle down permanently, while others would again drift 30 off, farming and hunting alternately to support their families. The backwoodsman's dress was in great part borrowed from his Indian foes. He wore a fur cap or BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 103 felt hat, moccasins, and either loose, thin trousers, or else simply leggings of buckskin or elk-hide, and the Indian breech-clout. He was always clad in the fringed hunting-shirt, of homespun or buckskin, the most pic- turesque and distinctively national dress ever worn ins America. It 'was a loose smock or tunic, reaching nearly to the knees, and held in at the waist by a broad belt, from which hung the tomahawk and scalping-knife. His weapon was the long, small-bore, flint-lock rifle, clumsy, and ill-balanced, but exceedingly accurate. It was lo very hea\y, and when upright, reached to the chin of a tall man; for the barrel of thick, soft iron, was four feet in length, while the stock was short, and the butt scooped out. Sometimes it was plain, sometimes ornamented. It was generally bored out — or, as the expression then was, 15 *' sawed out^^ — to carry a ball of seventy, more rarely of thirty or forty, to the pound ; and was usually of backwoods manufacture. The marksman almost always fired from a rest, and rarely at a very long range; and the shooting was marvellously accurate. 20 In the backwoods there was very little money; barter was the common form of exchange, and peltries were often used as a circulating medium, a beaver, otter, fisher, dressed buckskin or large bearskin being reckoned as equal to two foxes or wildcats, four coons, or eight 25 minks. A young man inherited nothing from his father but his strong frame and eager heart; but before him lay a whole continent wherein to pitch his farm, and he felt ready to marry as soon as he became of age, even though he had nothing but his clothes, his horses, his axe, and 30 his rifle. If a girl was well off, and had been careful and industrious, she might herself bring a dowry, of a cow 104 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS and a calf, a brood mare, a bed well stocked with blankets, and a chest containing her clothes — the latter not very elaborate, for a woman's dress consisted of a hat or poke bonnet, a "bed gown'' perhaps a jacket, and a Hnsey 5 petticoat, while her feet were thrust into coarse shoe- packs or moccasins. Fine clothes were rare; a suit of such cost more than two hundred acres of good land. The first lesson the backwoodsmen learnt was the necessity of self-help; the next, that such a community 10 could only thrive if all joined in helping one another. Log-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuck- ings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came together to do what the family itself could hardly accomplish alone. Every such meeting was 15 the occasion of a frolic and dance for the young people, whisky and rum being plentiful, and the host exerting his utmost power to spread the table with backwood delicacies — bear-meat and venison, vegetables from the *' truck-patch," where squashes, melons, beans, and the 20 like were grown, Vild fruits, bowls of milk, and apple pies, which were the acknowledged standard of luxury. At the better houses there was metheglin or small beer, cider, cheese, and biscuits. Tea was so little known that many of the backwoods people were not aware it was a beverage 25 and at first attempted to eat the leaves with salt or butter. The young men prided themselves on their bodily strength, and were always eager to contend against one another in athletic games, such as wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting flour-barrels; and they also sought 30 distinction in vieing with one another at their work. Sometimes they strove against one another singly, some- times they divided into parties, each bending all its BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 105 energies to be first in shucking a given heap of corn or cutting (with sickles) an alio ted patch of wheat. Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also, in the backwoods fashions, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of hunting-shirts embroidered 5 with porcupine quills; they were loud, boastful, and pro- fane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally savage fights were frequent; the combatants, who were surrounded by rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting, and gouging. The fall of one of them lo did not stop the fight, for the man who was down was maltreated without mercy until he called " enough. '' The victor always bragged savagely of his prowess, often leaping on a stump, crowing and flapping his arms. This last was a thoroughly American touch; but otherwise is one of these contests was less a boxing match than a kind of backwoods pankration° no less revolting than its ancient prototype of Olympic fame. Yet, if the uncouth borderers were as brutal as the highly polished Greeks, they were more manly; defeat was not necessarily con- 20 sidered disgrace, a man often fighting when he was certain to be beaten, while the onlookers neither hooted nor pelted the conquered. We first hear of the noted Indian fighter, Simon Kenton,° as leaving a rival for dead after one of these ferocious duels, and fleeing from his home 25 in terror of the punishment that might follow the deed. Such fights were specially frequent when the backwoods- men went into the little frontier towns to see horse-races or fairs. A wedding was always a time of festival. If there was 30 a church anywhere near, the bride rode thither on horse- back behind her father, and after the service her pillion^ 106 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS was shifted to the bridegroom's steed. If, as generally- happened, there was no church, the groom and his friends, all armed, rode to the house of the bride's father, plenty of whisky being drunk, and the men racing recklessly 5 along the narrow bridle-paths, for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was performed, and then a huge dinner was eaten; after which the fiddling and dancing began, and were continued all the afternoon, and most of the night 10 as well. A party of girls stole off the bride and put her to bed in the loft above; and a party of young men then performed the like service for the groom. The fun was hearty and coarse, and the toasts always included one to the young couple with the wish that they might have 15 many big children; for as long as they could remember the backwoodsmen had lived at war while looking ahead they saw no chance of its ever stopping, and so each son was regarded as a future warrior, a help to the whole community. The neighbors all joined again in chop- 20 ping and rolUng the logs for the young couple's future house, then in raising the house itself, and finally in feast- ing and dancing at the house-warming. Funerals were simple, the dead body being carried to the grave in a coffin slung on poles and borne by four 25 men. There was not much schooling, and few boys or girls learnt much more than reading, writing, and ciphering up to the rule of three. Where the school-houses existed they were only dark, mean log-huts, and, if in the south- 3oern colonies, were generally placed in the so-called ^^old fields," or abandoned farms grown up with pines. The schoolmaster boarded about with the families; his learn- BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGH AMIES 107 ing was rarely great, nor was his discipline good, in spite of the frequency and severity of the canings. The price for such tuition was at the rate of twenty shillings a year, in Pennsylvania currency. Each family did everything that could be done for 5 itself. The father and sons worked with axe, hoe, and sickle. Almost every house contained a loom, and al- most every woman was a weaver. Linsey-woolsey, made from flax grown near the cabin, and of wool from the backs of the few sheep, was the warmest and most sub- lo stantial cloth; and when the flax crop failed and the flocks were destroyed by wolves, the children had but scanty covering to hide their nakedness. The man tanned the buckskin, the woman was tailor and shoemaker, and made the deerskin sifters to be used instead of bolting- i5 cloths. There were a few pewter spoons in use; but the table furniture consisted mainly of hand-made trenchers, platters, noggins, ° and bowls. The cradle was of peeled hickory bark. Ploughshares had to be imported, but har- rows and sleds were made without difficulty; and the coop- 20 er work was well done. Chaff beds were thrown on the floor of the loft, if the house-owner was well off. Each cabin had a hand-mill and a hominy-block; the last was borrowed from the Indians, and was only a large block of wood, with a hole burned in the top, as a mortar, where 25 the pestle was worked. If there were any sugar maples accessible, they were tapped every year. But some articles, especially salt and iron, could not be produced in the backwoods. In order to get them each family collected during the year all the furs possible, 30 these being valuable and yet easily carried on pack-horses, the sole means of transport. Then, after seeding time, 108 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS in the fall, the people of a neighborhood ordinarily joined in sending down a train of peltry-laden pack-horses to some large seacoast or tidal-river trading town, where their burdens were bartered for the needed iron and salt. 5 The unshod horses all had bells hung round their necks; the clappers were stopped during the day, but when the train was halted for the night, and the horses were hob- bled and turned loose, the bells were once more un- stopped. Several men accompanied each little caravan, 10 and sometimes they drove with them steers and hogs to sell on the seacoast. A bushel of alum salt was worth a good cow and calf, and as each of the poorly fed, under- sized pack-animals could carry but two bushels, the mountaineers prized it greatly, and, instead of salting or 15 pickling their venison, they jerked it by drying it in the sun or smoking it over a fire. The life of the backwoodsmen was one long struggle. The forest had to be felled; droughts, deep snows, freshets, cloudbursts, forest fires, and all the other dangers of a 20 wilderness life faced. Swarms of deer-flies, mosquitoes, and midges rendered life a torment in the weeks of hot weather. Rattlesnakes and copperheads were very plentiful, and, the former especially constant sources of danger and death. Wolves and bears were incessant 25 and inveterate foes of the live stock, and the cougar, or panther, occasionally attacked man as well. More ter- rible still, the wolves sometimes went mad, and the men who then encountered them were almost certain to be bitten and to die of hydrophobia. 30 Every true backwoodsman was a hunter. Wild turkeys were plentiful. The pigeons at times filled the woods with clouds that hid the sun and broke down the branches BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 109 on their roosting-grounds as if a whirlwind had passed. The black and gray squirrels swarmed, devastating the corn-fields, and at times gathering in immense com- panies and migrating across mountain and river. The hunter^s ordinary game was the deer, and after that thes bear; the elk was already growing uncommon. No form of labor is harder than the chase, and none is so fascinat- ing nor so excellent as a training-school for war. The successful still-hunter of necessity possessed skill in hiding and in creeping noiselessly upon the wary quarry, lo as well as in imitating the notes and calls of the different beasts and birds; skill in the use of the rifle and in throw- ing the tomahawk he already had; and he perforce ac- quired keenness of eye, thorough acquaintance with woodcraft, and the power of standing the severest strains is of fatigue, hardship, and exposure. He lived out in the woods for many months w^ith no food but meat, and no shelter whatever, unless he made a lean-to of brush or crawled into a hollow sycamore. Such training stood the frontier folk in good stead 20 when they were pitted against the Indians; without it they could not even have held their own, and the white advance would have been absolutely checked. Our frontiers were pushed westward by the warlike skill and adventurous personal prowess of the individual settlers; 25 regular armies by themselves could have done little. For one square mile the regular armies added to our domain, the settlers added ten, — a hundred would probably be nearer the truth. A race of peaceful, unwarlike farmers would have been helpless before such foes as the red 30 Indians, and no auxiliary military force could have pro- tected them or enabled them to move westward. Colon- 110 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS ists fresh from the Old World, no matter how thrifty, steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on the frontier; they had to settle where they were pro- tected from the Indians by a living barrier of bold and 5 self-reliant American borderers. The West would never have been settled save for the fierce courage and the eager desire to brave danger so characteristic of the stalwart backwoodsmen. These armed hunters, woodchoppers, and farmers 10 were their own soldiers. They built and manned their own forts; they did their own fighting under their own commanders. There were no regiments of regular troops along the frontier. In the event of an Indian inroad each borderer had to defend himself until there was time 15 for them all to gather together to repel or avenge it. Every man was accustomed to the use of arms from his child- hood; when a boy was twelve j^ears old he was given a rifle and made a fort-soldier, with a loophole where he was to stand if the station was attacked. The war was 20 never-ending, for even the times of so-called peace were broken by forays and murders; a man might grow from babyhood to middle age on the border, and yet never remember a year in which some one of his neighbors did not fall a victim to the Indians. 25 There was everywhere a rude military organization, which included all the able-bodied men of the commun- ity. Every settlement had its colonels and captains; but these officers, both in their training and in the authority they exercised, corresponded much more nearly to Indian 30 chiefs than to the regular army men whose titles they bore. They had no means whatever of enforcing their orders, and their tumultuous and disorderly levies of BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 111 sinewy riflemen were hardly as well disciplined as the Indians themselves. The superior officer could advise, entreat, lead, and influence his men, but he could not command them, or, if he did, the men obeyed him only just so far as it suited them. If an officer planned as scout or campaign, those who thought proper accompanied him, and the others stayed at home, and even those who went out came back if the fit seized them, or perchance followed the lead of an insubordinate junior officer whom they liked better then they did his superior. There lo was no compulsion to perform military duties beyond dread of being disgraced in the eyes of the neighbors, and there w^as no pecuniar j^ reward for performing them; nevertheless the moral sentiment of a backwoods com- munity was too robust to tolerate habitual remissness is in military affairs, and the coward and laggard were treated with utter scorn, and were generally in the end either laughed out, or "hated out,'' of the neighbor- hood, or else got rid of in a still more summary manner. Among people naturally brave and reckless, this pubUc20 opinion acted fairly effectively, and there was generally but Uttle shrinking from mihtary service. A backwoods le\y was formidable because of the high average courage and prowess of the individuals composing it; it was on its own ground much more effective than 25 a like force of regular soldiers, but of course it could not be trusted on a long campaign. The backwoodsmen used their rifles better than the Indians, and also stood punishment better, but they never matched them in surprises nor in skill in taking advantage of cover, and 30 very rarely equalled their discipUne in the battle itself. After all, the pioneer was primarily a husbandman; the 112 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS time spent in chopping trees and tilling the soil his foe spent in preparing for or practising forest warfare, and so the former, thanks to the exercise of the very qualities which in the end gave him the possession of the soil, could 5 not, as a rule, hope to rival his antagonist in the actual conflict itself. When large bodies of the red men and white borderers were pitted against each other, the former were if anything the more likely to have the advantage. But the whites soon copied from the Indians their system 10 of individual and private warfare, and the}^ probably caused their foes far more damage and loss in this way than in the large expeditions. Many noted border scouts and Indian fighters — such men as Boon, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, McCulloch, Mansker — grew to over- is match their Indian foes at their own game, and held themselves above the most renowned warriors. But these men carried the spirit of defiant self-reliance to such an extreme that their best work was always done when they were alone or in small parties of but four or 20 five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, going a wonderful distance, enduring extreme hardship, risking the most terrible of deaths, and harrying the hostile tribes into a madness of terror and revengeful hatred. 25 As it was in military matters, so it was with the ad- ministration of justice by the frontiersman; they had few courts, and knew but little law, and yet they contrived to preserve order and morality with rough effectiveness, by combining to frown down on the grosser misdeeds, 30 and to punish the more flagrant misdoers. Perhaps the spirit in which they acted can best be shown by the recital of an incident in the career of the three McAfee brothers, BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 113 who were among the pioneer hunters of Kentucky. Pre- vious to trying to move their famihes out to the new country, they made a cache of clothing, implements, and provisions, which in their absence was broken into and plundered. They caught the thief, "a little diminu-5 tive, red-headed white man,^^ a runaway convict servant from one of the tide-water counties of Virginia. In the first impulse of anger at finding that he was the criminal, one of the McAfees rushed at him to kill him with his tomahawk; but the weapon turned, the man was only lo knocked down, and his assailant's gusty anger subsided as quickly as it had risen, giving way to a desire to do stern but fair justice. So the three captors formed themselves into a court, examined into the case, heard the man in his own defence, and after due consultation decided that is "according to their opinion of the laws he had forfeited his life, and ought to be hung,'^ but none of them were willing to execute the sentence in cold blood, and they ended by taking their prisoner back to his master. The incident was characteristic in more than one way. 20 The prompt desire of the backwoodsman to avenge his own wrong; his momentary furious anger, speedily quelled and replaced by a dogged determination to be fair but to exact full retribution; the acting entirely without regard to legal forms or legal officials, but yet in a spirit which 25 spoke well for the doer's determination to uphold the essentials that make honest men law-abiding; together with the good faith of the whole proceeding, and the amusing ignorance that it would have been in the least unlawful to execute their own rather harsh sentence — all 30 these were typical frontier traits. Some of the same traits appear in the treatment commonly adopted in 114 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS the backwoods to meet the case — of painfully frequent occurrence in the times of Indian wars — where a man taken prisoner by the savages, and supposed to be mur- dered, returned after two or three years' captivity, only 5 to find his wife married again. In the wilderness a hus- band was almost a necessity to a woman; her surroundings made the loss of the protector and provider an appalling calamity; and the widow, no matter how sincere her sorrow, soon remarried — for there were many suitors 10 where women were not over-plenty. If in such a case the one thought dead returned, the neighbors and the parties interested seem frequently to have held a sort of informal court, and to have decided that the woman should choose either of the two men she wished to be her 15 husband, the other being pledged to submit to the deci- sion and leave the settlement. Evidently no one had the least idea that there was any legal irregularity in such proceedings. The McAfees themselves and the escaped convict 20 servant whom they captured typify the two prominent classes of the backwoods people. The frontier, in spite of the outward uniformity of means and manners, is pre-eminently the place of sharp contrasts. The two extremes of society — the strongest, best, and most adven- 25 turous, and the weakest, most shiftless, and vicious — are which seem naturally to drift to the border. Most of the men who came to the backwoods to hew out homes and rear families were stern, manly, and honest; but there was also a large influx of people drawn from the worst immi- 30 grants that perhaps ever were brought to America — the mass of convict servants, redemptioners, and the like, who formed such an excessively undesirable substratum to the BACKSWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 115 otherwise excellent population of the tide-water regions in Virginia and the Carolinas. Many of the southern crackers or poor whites spring from this class, which also in the backwoods gave birth to generations of violent and hardened criminals, and to an even greater numbers of shiftless, lazy, cowardly cumberers of the earth^s surface. They had in many places a permanently bad effect upon the tone of the whole community. Moreover, the influence of heredity was no more plainly perceptible than was the extent of individual variation, lo If a member of a bad family wished to reform, he had every opportunity to do so; if a member of a good family had vicious propensities, there was nothing to check them. All qualities, good and bad, are intensified and accen- tuated in the life of the wilderness. The man who in is civilization is merely sullen and bad-tempered becomes a murderous, treacherous ruffian when transplanted to the wilds; while, on the other hand, his cheery, quiet neigh- bor develops into a hero, ready uncomplainingly to lay down his life for his friend. One who in an eastern cityao is merely a backbiter and slanderer, in the western woods lies in wait for his foe with a rifle; sharp practice in the East becomes highway robbery in the West; but at the same time negative good-nature becomes active self- sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into 25 a prompt and determined war upon vice. The ne^er-do- well of a family who in one place has his debts paid a couple of times and is then forced to resign from his clubs and lead a cloudy but innocuous existence on a small pen- sion, in the other abruptly finishes his career by being 30 hung for horse-stealing. In the backwoods the lawless led lives of abandoned 116 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS wickedness; they hated good for good's sake, and did their utmost to destroy it. Where the bad element was large gangs of horse-thieves, highwaymen, and other criminals often united with the uncontrollable young men of vicious 5 tastes, who were given to gambling, fighting and the like. They then formed half-secret organizations, often of great extent and with wide ramifications; and if they could control a community they established a reign of terror, driving out both ministers and magistrates, and 10 killing without scruple those who interfered with them. The good men in such a case banded themselves together as regulators and put down the wicked with ruthless severity, by the exercise of lynch law, shooting and hang- ing the worst off-hand. 15 Jails were scarce in the wilderness, and often were en- tirely wanting in a district, which, indeed, was quite likely to lack legal officers also. If punishment was inflicted at all it was apt to be severe, and took the form of death or whipping. An impromptu jury of neighbors 20 decided with a rough-and-ready sense* of fair play and justice what punishment the crime demanded, and then saw to the execution of their own decree. ^Yhipping was the usual reward of theft. Occasionally, torture was resorted to,»but not often; and, to their honor be it said, 25 the backwoodsmen were horrified at the treatment ac- corded both to black slaves and to white convict serv^ants in the lowlands. They were superstitious, of course, believing in witch- craft and signs and omens; and it may be noted that 30 their superstition showed a singular mixture of old-world survivals and of practices borrowed from the savages or evolved by the very force of their strange surroundings. BACKSWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 117 At the bottom they were deeply religious in their tenden- cies; and although ministers and meeting-houses were rare, yet the backwoods cabins often contained Bibles, and the mothers used to instil into the minds of their children reverence for Sunday, while many even of the 5 hunters refused to hunt on that day. Those of them who knew the right honestly tried to live up to it, in spite of the manifold temptations to backsliding offered by their lives of hard and fierce contention. But Calvinism, though more congenial to them than Episcopacy, and infinitely lo more so than Catholicism, was too cold for the fiery hearts of the borderers; they were not stirred to the depths of their natures till other creeds, and, above all, Methodism, worked their way into the wilderness. Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they 15 had hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their very hearts' core. Their lives were harsh and narrow, they ^gained their bread by their blood and 20 sweat, in the unending struggle with the wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; they were also upright, 2S resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers. THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE ^ The great historian of the future will have easy access to innumerable facts patiently gathered by tens of thou- sands of investigators, whereas the great historian of the past had very few facts, and often had to gather most 5 of these himself. The great historian of the future can- not be excused if he fails to draw on the vast storehouses of knowledge that have been accumulated, if he fails to profit by the wisdom and work of other men, which are now the common property of all intelligent men. He 10 must use the instruments which the historians of the past did not have ready to hand. Yet even with these instruments he cannot do as good work as the best of the elder historians unless he has vision and imagination, the power to grasp what is essential and to reject the 15 infinitely more numerous nonessentials, the power to embody ghosts, to put flesh and blood on dry bones, to make dead men living before our eyes. ^ In short he must have the power to take the science of history and turn it into literature. 20 Those who wish history to be treated as a purely utilitarian science often decry the recital of the mighty deeds of the past, the deeds which always have aroused, and for a long period to come are likely to arouse, most interest. These men say that we should study not the 25 unusual but the usual. They say that we profit most by 1 Reprinted from the version of the address, ''History as Literature,^' which appeared in the Boston Transcript. The address is included in the volume History as Literature,. 118 THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 119 laborious research into the drab monotony of the ordinary, rather than by fixing our eyes on the purple patches that break it. Beyond all question the great historian, of the future must keep ever in mind the relative importance of the usual and the unusual. If he is a really greats historian, if he possesses the highest imaginative and literary quaUty, he will be able to interest us in the gray tints of the general landscape no less than in the flame hues of the jutting peaks. It is even more essential to have such quahty in writing of the commonplace than lO in writing of the exceptional. Otherwise no profit will come from study of the ordinary; for writings are useless unless they are read, and they cannot be read unless they are readable. Furthermore, while doing full justice to the importance of the usual, of the commonplace, the is great historian will not lose sight of the importance of the heroic. It is hard to tell just what it is that is most important to know. The wisdom of one generation may seem the folly of the next. This is just as true of the wisdom of 20 the dry-as-dusts as of the wisdom of those who write interestingly. ]\Ioreover, while the value of the by- products of knowledge does not readily yield itself to quantitative expression, it is none the less real. A utilitarian education should undoubtedly be the foun-2S dation of all education. But it is far from advisable, it is far from wise, to have it the end of all education. Technical training will more and more be accepted as the prime factor in our educational system, a factor as essential for the farmer, the blacksmith, the seamstress, 30 and the cook, as for the lawyer, the doctor, the engineer, and the stenographer. For similar reasons the purely 120 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS practical and technical lessons of history, the lessons that help us to grapple with our immediate social and industrial problems, will also receive greater emphasis than ever before. But if we are wise we will no more 5 permit this practical training to exclude knowledge of that part of literature which is history than of that part of literature which is poetry. Side by side with the need for the perfection of the individual in the technique of his special calling goes the need of broad human sympathy, 10 and the need of lofty and generous emotion in that in- diividual. Only thus can the citizenship of the modern state rise level to the complex modern social needs. . . . The work of the archaeologist, the work of the an- thropologist, the work of the palseo-ethnologist — out of 15 all these a great literary historian may gather material indispensable for his use. He, and we, ought fully to acknowledge our debt to the collectors of these in- dispensable facts. The investigator in any line may do work which puts us all under lasting obligations to him, 20 even though he be totally deficient in the art of literary expression, that is, totally deficient in the ability to convey vivid and lifelike pictures to others of the past whose secrets he has laid bare. I would give no scanty or grudging acknowledgment to the deeds of such a man, 25 He does a lasting service; whereas the man who tries to make literary expression cover his ignorance or mis- reading of facts renders less than no service. But the service done is immeasurably increased in value when the man arises who from his study of a myriad dead 30 fragments is able to paint some living picture of the past. THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 121 This is why the record as great writers preserve it has a value immeasurably beyond what is merely lifeless. Such a record pulses with immortal life. It may recount the deed or the thought of a hero at some supreme mo- ment. It may be merely the portrayal of homely every- 5 day hfe. This matters not, so long as in either event the genius of the historian enables him to paint in colors that do not fade. The cry of the Ten Thousand^ when they first saw the sea still stirs the hearts of men. The ruthless death scene between Jehu° and Jezebel; wicked lo Ahab,° smitten by the chance arrow, and propped in his chariot until he died at sundown; Josiah,° losing his life because he would not heed the Pharaoh's solemn warning, and mourned by all the singing men and all the singing women — the fates of these kings and of this king's is daughter, are part of the common stock of knowledge of mankind. Thej^ were petty rulers of petty principal- ities; yet, compared with them, mighty conquerors, who added empire to empire, Shalmaneser"^ and Sargon, Amenhotep and Rameses, are but shadows; for the deeds 20 and the deaths of the kings of Judah and Israel are written in words that, once read, cannot be forgotten. The Peloponnesian War° bulks of unreal size to-day be- cause it once seemed thus to bulk to a master mind. Only a great historian can fittingly deal with a very great sub- 25 ject; yet because the qualities of chief interest in human history can be shown on a small field no less than on a large one, some of the greatest historians have treated sub- jects that only their own genius rendered great. So true is this that if great events lack a great historian, 30 and a great poet writes about them, it is the poet who fixes them in the mind of mankind, so that in after-time 122 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS importance the real has become the shadow and the shadow the reaUty. Shakespeare has definitely fixed the character of the Richard III,° of whom ordinary men think and speak. Keats° forgot even the right name of 5 the man who first saw the Pacific Ocean; yet it is his lines which leap to our minds when we think of the *^wild surmise" felt by the indomitable explorer-conqueror from Spain when the vast new sea burst on his vision. When, however, the great historian has spoken, his 10 work will never be undone. No poet can ever supersede what Napier° wrote of the storming of Badajoz, of the British infantry at Albuera, and of the light artillery at Fuentes d'Oiioro. After Parkman° had written of Montcalm" and Wolfe° there was left for other writers IS only what Fitzgerald" left for other translators of Omar Khayyam. Much new light has been thrown on the history of the Byzantine Empire by the many men who have studied it of recent years; we read each new writer with pleasure and profit; and after reading each we take 20 down a volume of Gibbon," with renewed thankfulness that a great writer was moved to do a great task. The greatest of future archaeologists will be the great historian who instead of being a mere 'antiquarian delver in dust heaps has the genius to reconstruct for us the 25 immense panorama of the past. He must possess knowl- edge. He must possess that without which knowledge is of so little use, wisdom. What he brings from the charnel-house he must use with such potent wizardry that we shall see the life that was and not the death that is. 30 For remember that the past was life just as much as the present is life. Whether it be Egypt, or Mesopotamia, or Scandinavia with which he deals, the great historian, if THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 123 the facts permit him, will put before us the men and women as they actually hved so that we shall recognize them for what they were, li\4ng beings. Men like Maspero°, Breasted,^ and Weigair have already begun this work for the countries of the Nile and the Euphrates. For Scan- 5 dinavia the groundwork was laid long ago in the Heim- skringla° and in such sagas° as those of Burnt Njal and Gisli Soursop. Minute descriptions of mummies and of the furniture of tombs help us as little to understand the Egypt of the mighty da^^s, as to sit inside the tomb of Mount lo Vernon° would help us to see Washington the soldier leading to battle his scarred and tattered veterans, or Washington the statesman, by his serene strength of character, rendering it possible for his countrymen to estabhsh themselves as one great nation. 15 The great historian must be able to paint for us the life of the plain people, the ordinary men and women, of the time of which he writes. He can do this only if he possesses the highest kind of imagination. Collections of figures no more give us a picture of the past than the 20 reading of a tariff report on hides or woolens gives us an idea of the actual lives of the men and women who Hve on ranches or work in factories. The great historian will in as full measure as possible present to us the every-day hfe of the men and women of the age which he describes. 25 Nothing that tells of this life will come amiss to him. The instruments of their labor and the weapons of their war- fare, the wills that they wrote, the bargains that they made, and the songs that they sang when they feasted and made love; he must use them all. He must tell us of the toil 30 of the ordinary man in ordinary times, and of the play by which that ordinary toil was broken. He must never 124 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS forget that no event stands out entirely isolated. He must trace from its obscure and humble beginnings each of the movements that in its hour of triumph has shaken the world. 5 Yet he must not forget that the times that are ex- traordinary need especial portrayal. In the revolt against the old tendency of historians to deal exclusively with the spectacular and the exceptional, to treat only of war and oratory and government, many modern writers 10 have gone to the opposite extreme. They fail to realize that in the lives of nations as in the lives of men there are hours so fraught with weighty achievement, with triumph or defeat, with joy or sorrow, that each such hour may determine all the years that are to come there- is after, or may outweigh all the years that have gone be- fore. In the writings of our historians, as in the lives of our ordinary citizens, we can neither afford to forget that it is the ordinary every-day life which counts most; nor yet that seasons come when ordinary qualities count 20 for but little in the face of great contending forces of good and of evil, the outcome of whose strife determines whether the nation shall walk in the glory of the morn- ing or in the gloom of spiritual death. The historian must deal with the daj^s of common 25 things, and deal with them so that they shall interest us in reading of them as our own common things interest us as we live among them. He must trace the changes that come almost unseen, the slow and gradual growth that transforms for good or for evil the children and grand- 30 children so that they stand high above or far below the level on which their forefathers stood. He must also trace the great cataclysms that interrupt and divert this THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 125 gradual development. He can no more afford to be blind to one class of phenomena than to the other. He must ever remember that while the worst offense of which . he can be guilty is to write vividly and inaccurately, yet that unless he writes vividly he cannot write truthfully; 5 for no amount of dull, painstaking detail will sum up as the whole truth unless the genius is there to paint the truth. There can be no better illustration of what I mean than is afforded by the history of Russia during the last lo thousand years. The historian must trace the growth of the earhest Slav communities of the forest and the steppe, the infiltration of Scandinavian invaders who gave them their first power of mass action, and the slow, chaotic development of the little communes into barbarous 15 cities and savage princedoms. In later Russian history he must show us priest and noble, merchant and serf, changing slowly from the days when Ivan the Terrible^ warred against Batory, the Magyar king of Poland, until the present moment, when with half-suspicious eyes the 20 people of the Czar watch their remote Bulgarian kinsmen standing before the last European stronghold of the Turk. During all these centuries there were multitudes of wars, foreign and domestic, any or all of which were of little moment compared to the slow working of the 25 various forces that wrought in the times of peace. But there was one period of storm and overthrow so terrible that it affected profoundly for all time the whole growth of the Russian people, in inmost character no less than in external dominion. Early in the thirteenth century the 30 genius of Jenghiz Khan° stirred the Mongol horsemen of the mid-Asian pastures to a movement as terrible to 126 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS civilization as the lava flow of a volcano to the lands around the volcano's foot. When that century opened, • the Mongols were of no more weight in the world than the Touaregs° of the Sahara are to-day. Long before the 5 century had closed they had ridden from the Yellow Sea to the Adriatic and the Persian Gulf. They had crushed Christian and Moslem" and Buddhist" ahke beneath the iron cruelty of their sway. They had con- quered China as their successors conquered India. They 10 sacked Baghdad, the seat of the Khahf. In mid-Europe their presence for a moment caused the same horror to faU on the warring adherents of the pope and the kaiser. To Europe they were a scourge so frightful, so irresistible, that the people cowered before them as if they 15 had been demons. No European army of that day, of any nation, was able to look them in the face on a stricken field. Bestial in their lives, irresistible in battle, merciless in victory, they trampled the lands over which they rode into bloody mire beneath the hoofs of their horses. The 20 squat, slit-eyed, brawny horse-bowonen drew a red furrow across Hungary, devasted Poland, and in Silesia over- threw the banded chivalry of Germany. But it was in Russia that they did their worst. They not merely con- quered Russia, but held the Russians as cowering and 25 abject serfs for two centuries. Every feeble effort at resistance was visited with such bloodtliirsty vengeance that finally no Russian ventured ever to oppose them at all. But the princes of the cities soon found that the beast-like fury of the conquerors when their own desires 30 were thwarted, was only equalled by their beast-like indifference to all that was done among the conquered people themselves, and that they were ever ready to hire THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 127 themselves out to aid each Russian against his brother. Under this regime the Russian who rose was the Russian who with cringing servility to his Tartar overlords cora- bined ferocious and conscienceless greed in the treat- ment of his fellow-Russians. Moscow came to the fronts by using the Tartar to help conquer the other Russian cities, paying as a price abject obedience to all Tartar demands. In the long run the fierce and pliant cunning of the conquered people proved too much for the short- sighted and arrogant brutality of the conquerors. The lo Tartar power, the Mongolian power, waned. Russia be- came united, threw off the 3^oke, and herself began a career of aggression at the expense of her former con- querors. But the reconquest of racial independence, vitally necessary though it was to Russia, had been paid i5 for by the establishment of a despotism Asiatic rathar than European in its spirit and working. The true historian will bring the past before our eyes as if it were the present. He will make us see as Uving men the hard-faced archers of Agincourt,"^ and the war- 20 worn spearmen who followed Alexander^ down beyond the rim of the known world. We shall hear grate on the coast of Britain the keels of the Low-Dutch sea-thieves° whose children's children were to inherit unknown conti- iients.° We shall thrill to the triumphs of Hannibal.°25 Gorgeous in our sight will rise the splendor of dead cities, and the might of the elder empires of which the very ruins crumbled to dust ages ago. Along ancient trade routes, across the world's waste spaces, the caravans shall move; and the admirals of uncharted seas shall furrow the oceans 30 with their lonely prows. Beyond the dim centuries we shall see the banners float above armed hosts. We shall ]28 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS see conquerors riding forward to victories that have changed the course of time. We shall listen to the prophecies of forgotten seers. Ours shall be the dreams of dreamers who dreamed greatly, who saw in their vision 5 peaks so lofty that never yet have they been reached by the sons and daughters of men. Dead poets shall sing to us the deeds of men of might and the love and the beauty of women. We shall see the dancing girls of Memphis."" The scent of the flowers in the Hanging 10 Gardens of Babylon^ will be heavy to our senses. We shall sit at feast with the kings of Nineveh® when they drink from ivory and gold. With Queen Maeve° in her sun parlor we shall watch the nearing chariots of the champions. For us the war-horns of King Olaf® 15 shall wail across the flood, and the harps sound high at festivals in forgotten halls. The frowning strongholds of the barons of old shall rise before us, and the white palace-castles from whose windows Syrian princes once looked across the blue ^gean. We shall know the valor 20 of the two-sworded Samurai.° Ours shall be the hoary wisdom and the strange, crooked folly of the imme- morial civilizations which tottered to a living death in India and in China. We shall see the terrible horsemen of Timur the Lame° ride over the roof of the world; we 25 shall hear the drums beat as the armies of Gustavus° and Frederick® and Napoleon® drive forward to victory. Ours shall be the woe of burgher and peasant, and ours the stern joy when freemen triumph and justice comes to her own. The agony of the galley-slaves shall be ours, 30 and the rejoicing when the wicked are brought low and the men of evil days have their reward. We shall see the glory of triumphant violence, and the revel of those THE HISTORIAN OF THE FUTURE 129 who do wrong in high places; and the broken-hearted despair that Hes beneath the glory and the revel. We shall also see the supreme righteousness of the wars for freedom and justice, and know that the men who fell in these wars made all mankind their debtors. 5 Some day the historians will tell us of these things. Some day, too, they will tell our children of the age and the land in which we now live. They will portray the conquest of the continent. They will show the slow be- ginnings of settlement, the growth of the fishing and trad- lo ing towns on the seacoast, the hesitating early ventures into the Indian-haunted forest. Then they will show the backwoodsmen, with their long rifles and their light axes, making their way with labor and peril through the wooded wilderness® to the Mississippi; and then the endless march is of the white-topped wagon-trains across plain and moun- tain to the coast of the greatest of the five great oceans. They will show how the land which the pioneers won slowly and with incredible hardship was filled in two gen- erations by the overflow from the countries of western 20 and central Europe. The portentous growth of the cities will be shown, and the change from a nation of farmers to a nation of business men and artisans, and all the far- reaching consequences of the rise of the new industrialism. The formation of a new ethnic type in this melting-pot 25 of the nations will be told. The hard materiahsm of our age will appear, and also the strange capacity for lofty idealism which must be reckoned with by all who would understand the American character. A people whose heroes are Washington and Lincoln, a peaceful people who 30 fought to a finish one of the bloodiest of wars, waged solely for the sake of a great principle and a noble idea, surely 130 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS possess an emergency standard far above mere money- getting. Those who tell the Americans of the future what the Americans of to-day and of yesterday have done, will per- 5 force tell much that is unpleasant. This is but saying that they will describe the arch-typical civiHzation of this age. Nevertheless when the tale is finally told, I believe that it will show that the forces working for good in our national life outweigh the forces working for evil, and 10 that, with many blunders and shortcomings, with much halting and turning aside from the path, we shall yet in the end prove our faith by our works, and show in our lives our belief that righteousness exalteth a nation. ADVENTURE BEAR HUNTING EXPERIENCES^ Early next morning we were over at the elk carcass, and, as we expected, found that the bear had eaten his fill at it during the night. His tracks showed him to be an immense fellow, and were so fresh that we doubted if he had left long before we arrived; and we made up ours minds to follow him up and try to find his lair. The bears that lived on these mountains had evidently been little disturbed; indeed, the Indians and most of the white hunt- ers are rather chary of meddling with ^^Old Ephraim,'^ as the mountainmen style the grizzly, unless they get him lo at a disadvantage; for the sport is fraught with some dan- ger and but small profit. The bears thus seemed to have very little fear of harm, and we thought it likely that the bed of the one who had fed on the elk would not be far away. . is My companion was a skilful tracker, and we took up the trail at once. For some distance it led over the soft, yielding carpet of moss and pine needles, and the foot- prints were quite easily made out, although we could fol- low them but slowly; for we had, of course, to keep a sharp 20 lookout ahead and around us as we walked noiselessly on in the sombre half-light always prevailing under the great pine trees, through whose thickly interlacing branches stray but few beams of fight, no matter how bright the sun may be outside. We made no sound ourselves, and every 25 little sudden noise sent a thrill through me as I peered about with each sense on the alert. Two or three of the ^ Reprinted by permission from Hunting Trips of a Ranch- maUj copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons. 133 134 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS ravens that we had scared from the carcass flew overhead, croaking hoarsely; and the pine tops moaned and sighed in the slight breeze — for pine trees seem to be ever in mo- tion, no matter how light the wind. 5 After going a few hundred yards the tracks turned off on a well-beaten path made by the elk; the woods were in many places cut up by these game-trails, which had often become as distinct as ordinary foot-paths. The beast's footprints were perfectly plain in the dust, and he had 10 lumbered along up the path until near the middle of the hill-side, where the ground broke away and there were hollows and bowlders. Here there had been a windfall, and the dead trees lay among the living, piled across one another in all directions; while between and around them 15 sprouted up a thick growth of young spruces and other evergreens. The trail turned off into the tangled thicket, within which it was almost certain we would find our quarry. We could still follow the tracks, by the slight scrapes of the claws on the bark or by the bent and broken 20 twigs, and we advanced with noiseless caution, slowly climbing over the dead tree trunks and upturned stumps, and not letting a branch rustle or catch on our clothes. When in the middle of the thicket we crossed what was almost a breastwork of fallen logs, and Merrifield, who 25 was leading, passed by the upright stem of a great pine. As soon as he was by it he sank suddenly on one knee, turning half round, his face fairly aflame with excitement; and as I strode past him, with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, was the great bear, slowly rising from 30 his bed among the young spruces. He had heard us, but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we were, for he reared up on his haunches sideways to us. Then he BEAR HUNTING EXPERIENCES 135 saw US and dropped down again on all-fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders seeming to bristle as he turned toward us. As he sank down on his forefeet I had raised the rifle; his head was bent shghtly down, and when I saw the top of the white bead fairly between his small, ght- s tering, evil eyes, I pulled trigger. Half rising up, the huge beast fell over on his side in the death-throes, the ball hav- ing gone into his brain, striking as fairly between the eyes as if the distance had been measured by a carpenter ^s rule. The whole thing was over in twenty seconds from the lo time I caught sight of the game; indeed, it was over so quickly that the grizzly did not have time to show fight at all or com.e a step toward us. It was the first I had ever seen, and I felt not a httle proud, as I stood over the great brindled bulk which lay stretched out at length in the cool is shade of the evergreens. He was a monstrous fellow, much larger than any I have seen since, whether alive or brought in dead by the hunters. As near as we could estimate (for of course we had nothing with which to weigh more than very small portions), he must have weighed about 20 twelve hundred pounds, and, though tliis is not as large as some of iiis kind are scid to grow in California^ it is yet a very unusual size for a bear. He was a good deal heavier than any of our horses, and it was with the greatest difficulty that we were able to skin him. He 25 must have been very old, his teeth and claws being all worn down and blunted; but nevertheless he had been Hving in plenty, for he was as fat as a prize-hog, the layers on his back being a finger's length in thickness. He was still in the summer coat, his hair being short, 30 and in color a curious brindled brown, somewhat like that of certain bull-dogs^ while all the bears we shot afterward 136 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS had the long thick winter fur, cinnamon or yellowish brown. By the way, the name of this bear has reference to its char- acter and not to its color, and should, I suppose, be prop- erly spelt grisly° — in the sense of horrible, exactly as we 5 speak of a '^ grisly spectre^' — and not grizzly; but per- haps the latter way of spelling it is too well established to be now changed. In killing dangerous game, steadiness is more needed than good shooting. No game is dangerous unless a man 10 is close up, for nowadays hardly any wild beast will charge from a distance of a hundred yards, but will rather tr}^ to run off; and if a man is close it is easy enough for him to shoot straight if he does not lose his head. A bear's brain is about the size of a pint bottle; and any one can hit a 15 pint bottle off-hand at thirty or forty feet. I have had two shots at bears at close quarters, and each time I fired into the brain, the bullet in one case striking fairly between the eyes, as told above, and in the other going in between the eye and ear. A novice at this kind of sport 20 will find it best and safest to keep in mind the old Norse viking's advice in reference to a long sword: '^If you go in close enough your sword will be long enough." If a poor shot goes in close enough he will find that he shoots straight enough. 25 I was very proud over my first bear; but Merrifield's chief feeling seemed to be disappointment that the animal had not had time to show fight. He was rather a reckless fellow, and very confident in his own skill with the rifle; and he really did not seem to have any more fear of the grizzlies 30 than if they had been so many jack-rabbits. I did not at all share his feelings, having a hearty respect for my foes' prowess, and in following and attacking them always took BEAR HUNTING EXPERIENCES 137 all possible care to get the chances on my side. Merrifield was sincerely sorry that we never had to stand a regular charge; while on this trip we killed five grizzlies with seven bullets, and except in the case of the she and cub, spoken of further on, each was shot about as quickly ass it got sight of us. A day or two after the death of the big bear, we went out one afternoon on horseback, intending merely to ride down to see a great canyon lying some six miles west of our camp; indeed, we went more to look at the scenery lo than for any other reason, though, of course, neither of us ever stirred out of camp without his rifle. We rode down the valley in which we had camped, through alter- nate pine groves and open glades, until we reached the canyon, and then skirted its brink for a mile or so. It was is a great chasm, many miles in length, as if the table-land had been rent asunder by some terrible and unknown force; its sides were sheer walls of rock, rising three or four hundred feet straight up in the air, and worn by the weather till they looked like the towers and battlements 20 of some vast fortress. Between them at the bottom was a space, in some places nearly a quarter of a mile wide, in others very narrow, through whose middle foamed a deep rapid torrent of which the sources la}^ far back among the snow-topped mountains around Cloud Peak. In this val- 25 ley, dark-green, sombre pines stood in groups, stiff and erect; and here and there among them were groves of poplar and cotton-wood, with slender branches and trem- bling leaves, their bright green already changing to yellow in the sharp fall weather. We went do\vn to where the 30 mouth of the canyon opened out, and rode our horses to the end of a great jutting promontory of rock, thrust 138 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS out into the plain; and in the eold, clear air we looked far over the broad valley of the Big Horn as it lay at our very feet, walled in on the other side by the distant chain of the Rocky Mountains. 5 Turning our horses, we rode back along the edge of another canyon-like valley, with a brook flowing down its centre, and its rocky sides covered with an uninterrupted pine forest — the place of all others in whose inaccessible wildness and ruggedness a bear would find a safe 10 retreat. After some time we came to where other valleys, with steep, grass-grown sides, covered with sage-brush, branched out from it, and we followed one of these out. There was plenty of elk sign about, and we saw several black-tail deer. These last were very common on the 15 mountains, but we had not hunted them at all, as we were in no need of meat. But this afternoon we came across a buck with remarkably fine antlers, and accordingly I shot it, and we stopped to cut off and skin out the horns, throwing the reins over the heads of the horses and 20 leaving them to graze by themselves. The body lay near the crest of one side of a deep valley, or ravine, which headed up on the plateau a mile to our left. Except for scattered trees and bushes the valley was bare; but there was heavy timber along the crests of the hills on its 25 opposite side. It took some time to fix the head properly, and we were just ending when Merrifield sprang to his feet and exclaimed ^^Look at the bears! ^' pointing down into the valley below us. Sure enough there were two bears (which afterwards proved to be an old she and a nearly 30 full-grown cub) traveling up the bottom of the valley, much too far off for us to shoot. Grasping our rifles and throwing off our hats we started off as hard as we could BEAR HUNTING EXPERIENCES 139 run, diagonally down the hill-side, so as to cut them off. It was some little time before they saw us, when they made off at a lumbering gallop up the valley. It would seem impossible to run into two grizzhes in the open, but they were going up hill, and we down, and moreover the 5 old one kept stopping. The cub would forge ahead and could probably have escaped us, but the mother now and then stopped to sit up on her haunches and look round at us, when the cub would run back to her. The upshot was that we got ahead of them^ when they turned and lo went straight up one hill-side as we ran straight down the other behind them. By this time I was pretty nearly done out, for running along the steep ground through the sage-brush was most exhausting work; and Merrifield kept gaining on me and was well in front. Just 15 as he disappeared over a bank, almost at the bottom of the valley, I tripped over a bush and fell full-length. When I got up I knew I could never make up the ground I had lost, and besides could hardly run any longer; Merrifield was out of sight below, and the bears were laboring up 20 the steep hill-side directly opposite and about three hundred yards off, so I sat down and began to shoot over Merrifield's head, aiming at the big bear. She was going very steadily and in a straight line, and each bullet sent up a puff of dust where it struck the dry soil, so that 1 25 could keep correcting my aim; and the fourth ball crashed into the old bear's flank. She lurched heavily forward, but recovered herself and reached the timber, while Merrifield, who had put on a spurt, was not far behind. I toiled up the hill at a sort of trot, fairly gasping and sob- 30 bing for breath; but before I got to the top I heard a couple of shots and a shout. The old bear had turned as soon as 140 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS she was in the timber, and came toward Merrifield, but he gave her the death-wound by firing into her chest, and then shot at the young one, knocking it over. When I came up he was just walking toward the latter to finish it with 5 the revolver, but it suddenly jumped up as Hvely as ever and made off at a great pace — ^for it was nearly full- grown. It was impossible to fire where the tree trunks were so thick, but there was a small opening across which it would have to pass, and collecting all my energies I 10 made a last run, got into position, and covered the open- ing with my rifle. The instant the bear appeared I fired, and it turned a dozen somersaults down-hill, rolling over and over; the ball had struck it near the tail and had ranged forward through the hollow of the body. Each of 15 us had thus given the fatal wound to the bear into which the other had fired the first bullet. The run, though short, had been very sharp, and over such awful country that we were completely fagged out, and could hardly speak for lack of breath. The sun had already set, and it was 20 too late to skin the animals; so we merely dressed them, caught the ponies — with some trouble, for they were frightened at the smell of the bear's blood on our hands — and rode home through the darkening woods. Next day we brought the teamster and two of the steadiest pack- 25 horses to the carcasses, and took the skins into camp. GETTING CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A RANCH ^ One December, while I was out on my ranch, so much work had to be done that it was within a week of Christ- mas before we were able to take any thought for the Christmas dinner. The winter set in late that year, and there had been comparatively little cold weather, but 5 one day the ice on the river had been sufficiently strong to enable us to haul up a wagonload of flour, with enough salt pork to last through the mnter, and a very few tins of canned goods, to be used at special feasts. We had some bushels of potatoes, the heroic victors of a struggle lo for existence in which the rest of our garden vegetables had succumbed to drought, frost, and grasshoppers; and we also had some wild plums and dried elk venison. But we had no fresh meat, and so one day my foreman and I agreed to make a hunt on the morrow. . 15 Accordingly one of the cowboys rode out in the frosty afternoon to fetch in the saddleband from the plateau three miles off, where they were grazing. It was after sunset when he returned. I was lounging out by the corral, my wolf-skin cap drawn down over my ears, and 20 my hands thrust deep into the pockets of my fur coat, gazing across the wintry landscape. Cold red bars in the winter sky marked where the sun had gone down be- hind a row of jagged, snow-covered buttes. Turning to go into the Httle bleak log house, as the 25 dusk deepened, I saw the horses trotting homeward in a long file, their unshod hoofs making no sound in the ^Reprinted by permission from Everybody's Magazine^ vol. ix, page 851. 141 142 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS light snow which covered the plain, turning it into a glimmering white waste wherein stood dark islands of leafless trees, with trunks and branches weirdly dis- torted. The cowboy, with bent head, rode behind the 5 line of horses, sometimes urging them on by the shrill cries known to cattlemen; and as they neared the corral they broke into a gallop, ran inside, and then halted in a mass. The frost lay on their shaggy backs, and Uttle icicles hung from their nostrils. 10 Choosing out two of the strongest and quietest, we speedily roped them and led them into the warm log stable, where they were given a plentiful supply of the short, nutritious buffalo-grass hay, while the rest of the herd were turned loose to shift for themselves. Then 15 we went inside the house to warm our hands in front of the great pile of blazing logs, and to wait impatiently until the brace of prairie chickens I had shot that after- noon should be fixed for supper. Then our rifles and cartridge belts were looked to, one of the saddles which 20 had met with an accident was overhauled, and we were ready for bed. It was necessary to get to the hunting grounds by sunrise, and it still lacked a couple of hours of dawn when the foreman wakened me as I lay asleep beneath the 25 buffalo robes. Dressing hurriedly and breakfasting on a cup of coffee and some mouthfuls of bread and jerked elk meat, we slipped out to the barn, threw the saddles on the horses, and were off. The air was bitterly chill; the cold had been severe 30 for two days, so that the river ice would again bear horses. Beneath the hght covering of powdery snow we could feel the rough ground like WTinkled iron under the horses' GETTING CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A RANCH US hoofs. There was no moon, but the stars shone beauti- fully down through the cold, clear air, and our willing horses galloped swiftly across the long bottom on which the ranch-house stood, threading their way deftly among the clumps of sprawling sagebush. 5 A mile off we crossed the river, the ice cracking with noises hke pistol shots as our horses picked their way gingerly over it. On the opposite side was a dense jungle of bullberry bushes, and on breaking through this we found ourselves galloping up a long, winding lo valley, which led back many miles into the hills. The crannies and little side ravines were filled with brush- wood and groves of stunted ash. By this time there was a faint flush of gray in the east, and as we rode silently along we could make out dimly the tracks made 15 by the wild animals as they had passed and repassed in the snow. Several times we dismounted to examine them. A couple of coyotes, possibly frightened by our approach, had trotted and loped up the valley ahead of us, leaving a trail like that of two dogs; the sharper, more 20 delicate footprints of a fox crossed our path; and out- side one long patch of brushwood a series of round im- prints in the snow betrayed where a bobcat — as plains- men term the small lynx — ^had been lurking around to try to pick up a rabbit or a prairie fowl. 25 As the dawn reddened, and it became light enough to see objects some little way off, we began to sit erect in our saddles and to scan the hillsides sharply for sight of feeding deer. Hitherto we had seen no deer tracks save inside the bullberry bushes by the river, and we 30 knew that the deer that lived in that impenetrable jungle were cunning whitetails which in such a place 144 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS could be hunted only by aid of a hound. But just be- fore sunrise we came on three lines of heart-shaped foot- marks in the snow, which showed where as many deer had just crossed a Httle plain ahead of us. They were 5 walking leisurely, and from the lay of the land we believed that we should find them over the ridge, where there v/as a brush coulee. Riding to one side of the trail, we topped the little ridge just as the sun flamed up, a burning ball of 10 crimson, beyond the snow}^ waste at our backs. Almost immediately afterward my companion leaped from his horse and raised his rifle, and as he pulled the trigger I saw through the twigs of a brush patch on our left the erect, startled head of a young black-tailed doe as she turned 15 to look at us, her great mule-like ears thrown forward. The ball broke her neck, and she turned a complete somer- sault downhill, while a sudden smashing of underbrush told of the flight of her terrified companions. We both laughed and called out ^^ dinner ^^ as we sprang 20 down toward her, and in a few minutes she was dressed and hung up by the hind legs on a small ash tree. The entrails and viscera we threw off to one side, after care- fully poisoning them from a little bottle of strychnine which I had in my pocket. Almost every cattleman 25 carries poison and neglects no chance of leaving out wolf bait, for the wolves are sources of serious loss to the un- fenced and unhoused flocks and herds. In this instance we felt particularly revengeful because it was but a few days since we had lost a fine yearling heifer. The tracks 30 on the hillside where the carcass lay when we found it, told the story plainly. The wolves, two in number, had crept up close before being discovered, and had then raced GETTING CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A RANCH 145 down on the astounded heifer almost before she could get fairly started. One brute had hamstringed her with a snap of his vise-like jaws, and once down, she was torn open in a twinkling. No sooner was the sun up than a warm west winds began to blow in our faces. The weather had sud- denly changed, and within an hour the snow was be- ginning to thaw and to leave patches of bare ground on the hillsides. We left out coats with our horses and struck off on foot for a group of high buttes cut up by lo the cedar canyons and gorges, in which we knew the old bucks loved to lie. It was noon before we saw anything more. We lunched at a clear spring — ^not needing much time, for all we had to do was to drink a draught of icy water and munch a strip of dried venison. Shortly after- is ward, as we were moving along a hillside with silent caution, we came to a sheer canyon of which the opposite face was broken by little ledges grown up with wind- beaten cedars. As we peeped over the edge, my companion touched my arm and pointed silently to one of the ledges, 20 and instantly I caught the glint of a buck's horns as he lay half behind an old tree trunk. A slight shift of position gave me a fair shot slanting down between his shoulders, and though he struggled to his feet, he did not go fifty yards after receiving the bullet. 2S This was all we could carry. Leading the horses around, we packed the buck behind my companion's saddle, and then rode back for the doe, which I put behind mine. But we were not destined to reach home without a slight adventure. When we got to the river we rode boldly on 30 the ice, heedless of the thaw; and about midway there was a sudden, tremendous crash, and men, horses, and 146 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS deer were scrambling together in the water amid slabs of floating ice. However, it was shallow, and no worse results followed than some hard work and a chilly bath. But what cared we? We were returning triumphant with 5 our Christmas dinner. CITIZENSHIP TRUE AMERICANISM 1 Patriotism was once defined as ^Hhe last refuge of a scoundrel;^' and somebody has recently remarked that when Dr. Johnson^ gave this definition he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained in the word ^'reform/' Of course both gibes were quite justifiable, in so far ass they were aimed at people who use noble names to cloak base purposes. Equally of course the man shows little wisdom and a low sense of duty who fails to see that love of country is one of the elemental virtues, even though scoundrels play upon it for their own selfish ends; and, lo inasmuch as abuses continually grow up in civic Ufe as in all other kinds of life, the statesman is indeed a weak- ling who hesitates to reform these abuses because the word ^' reform ^^ is often on the lips of men who are silly or dis- honest. 15 What is true of patriotism and reform is true also of Americanism. There are plenty of scoundrels alwaj^s ready to try to belittle reform movements or to bolster up existing iniquities in the name of Americanism; but this does not alter the fact that the man who can do most 20 in this country is and must be the man whose Americanism is most sincere and intense. Outrageous though it is to use a noble idea as the cloak for evil, it is still worse to assail the noble idea itself because it can thus be used. The men who do iniquity in the name of patriotism, of 25 reform, of Americanism, are merely one small division of the class that has always existed and will always exist, — 1 Reprinted by permission from American Ideals and Other Essays J copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons. 149 150 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil-doing. The stoutest and truest Americans are the very men 5 who have the least sympathy with the people who invoke the spirit of Americanism to aid what is vicious in our government, or to throw obstacles in the way of those who strive to reform it. It is contemptible to oppose a move- ment for good because that movement has already suc- loceeded somewhere else, or to champion an existing abuse because our people have always been wedded to it. To appeal to national prejudice against a given reform move- ment is in every way unworthy and silly. It is as childish to denounce free trade because England has adopted it 15 as to advocate it for the same reason. It is eminently proper, in dealing with the tariff, to consider the effect of tariff legislation in time past upon other nations as will as the effect upon our own; but in drawing conclusions it is in the last degree foolish to try to excite prejudice against 20 one system because it is in vogue in some given country, or to try to excite prejudice in its favor because the econo- mists of that country have found that it was suited to their own peculiar needs. In attempting to solve our difficult problem of municipal government it is mere folly to refuse 25 to profit by whatever is good in the examples of Man- chester° and Berlin because these cities are foreign, ex- actly as it is mere folly blindly to copy their examples without reference to our own totally different conditions. As for the absurdity of declaimimg against civil-service 30 reform, for instance, as ^'Chinese," because written ex- aminations have been used in China, it would be quite as wise to declaim against gunpowder because it was first TRUE AMERICANISM 151 utilized by the same people. In short, the man who, whether from mere dull fatuity or from an active interest in misgovernment, tries to appeal to American prejudice against things foreign, so as to induce Americans to op- pose any measure for good, should be looked on by hiss fellow-countrymen with the heartiest contempt. So much for the men who appeal to the spirit of Americanism to sustain us in wrong-doing. But we must never let our contempt for these men blind us to the nobility of the idea which they strive to degrade. lo We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if,, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender is ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. Our nation is that one among all the nations of the earth which holds in its hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy exceptional advantages, and are menaced by exceptional dangers; 20 and all signs indicate that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I firmly believe that we shall suc- ceed; but we must not foolishly bhnk the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail. On the contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out alias we can about the existence and extent of every evil, must acknowledge it to be such, and must then attack it with unyielding resolution. There are many such evils, and each must be fought after a separate fashion; yet there is one quality which we must bring to the solution of every 30 problem, — that is, an intense and fervid Americanism. We shall never be successful over the dangers that con- 152 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS front us; we shall never achieve true greatness, nor reach the lofty ideal which the founders and preservers of our mighty Federal Repubhc have set before us, unless we are Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, 5 keenly alive to the responsibility implied in the very name of American, and proud beyond measure of the glorious privilege of bearing it. There are two or three sides to the question of Ameri- canism, and two or three senses in which the word 10*^ Americanism^^ can be used to express the antithesis of what is unwholesome and undesirable. In the first place we wish to be broadly American and national, as opposed to being local or sectional. We do not wish, in poHtics, in literature, or in art, to develop that unwholesome parochial IS spirit, that over-exaltation of the little community at the expense of the great nation, which produces what has been described as the patriotism of the village, the patriotism of the belfry. Politically, the indulgence of this spirit was the chief cause of the calamities which befell the ancient 20 republics of Greece,° the mediseval repubhcs of Italy,° and the petty States of Germany^ as it was in the last century. It is this spirit of provincial patriotism, this inabiUty to take a view of broad adhesion to the whole nation that has been the chief among the causes that have 25 produced such anarchy in the South American States, and which have resulted in presenting to us, not one great Spanish-American federal nation stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, but a squabbhng multitude of revolution-ridden States, not one of which stands even 30 in the second rank as a power. However, politically this question of American nationality has been settled once for all. We are no longer in danger of repeating in our TRUE AMERICANISM 153 history the shameful and contemptible disasters that have befallen the Spanish possessions on this continent since they threw off the yoke of Spain. Indeed there is, all through our hfe, very much less of this parochial spirit than , there was formerly. Still there is an occasional outcrop- 5 ping here and there; and it is just as well that we should keep steadily in mind the futility of talking of a Northern Uterature or a Southern Uterature, an Eastern or a West- ern school of art or science. The ^^Sewanee Review^' and the ^'Overland Monthly/' like the ^^ Century '^ and the lo ^'Atlantic/' do good work, not merely for one section of the country, but for American literature as a whole. Their success really means as much for Americans who happen to hve in New York or Boston as for Americans who happen to Uve in the Gulf States or on the Pacific slope. Joel is Chandler Harris° is emphatically a national ^vriter; so is Mark Twain.^ They do not write merely for Georgia or Missouri, any more than for IlHnois or Connecticut; they write as Americans and for all people who can read Eng- lish. It is of very great consequence that we should have 20 a full and ripe hterary development in the United States, but it is not of the least consequence whether New York, or Boston, or Chicago, or San Francisco becomes the ht- erary centre of the United States. There is a second side to this question of a broad Amer- 25 icanism, however. The patriotism of the village or the belfry is bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse. There are philosophers who assure us that, in the future, patriotism will be regarded not as a virtue at all, but merely as a mental stage in the journey toward a state so of feeling when our patriotism will include the whole human race and all the world. This may be so; but the 154 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS age of which these philosophers speak is still several aeons distant. In fact, philosophers of this type are so very advanced that they are of no practical service to the pres- ent generation. It may be that in ages so remote that we 5 cannot now understand any of the feehngs of those who will dwell in them, patriotism will no longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly as it may be that in those remote ages people will look down upon and disregard monogamic marriage; but as things now are and have been for two 10 or three thousand years past, and are likely to be for two or three thousand years to come, the words '^home '^ and ^' country'^ mean a great deal. Nor do they show any tendency to lose their significance. At present, treason, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst of all possible 15 crimes. One may fall very far short of treason and yet be an undesirable citizen in the community. The man who becomes Europeanized, who loses his power of doing good work on this side of the water, and who loses his 20 love for his native land, is not a traitor; but he is a siUy and undesirable citizen. He is as emphatically a noxious element in our body politic as is the man who comes here from abroad and remains a foreigner. Nothing will more quickly or more surely disqualify a man from doing good 25 work in the world than the acquirement of that flaccid habit of mind which its possessors style cosmopoHtanism. It is not only necessary to Americanize the immigrants of foreign birth who settle among us, but it is even more necessary for those among us who are by birth and descent 30 already Americans not to throw away our birthright, and, with incredible and contemptible folly, wander back to bow down before the alien gods whom our forefathers TRUE AMERICANISM 155 forsook. It is hard to believe that there is any necessity to warn Americans that, when they seek to model them- selves on the lines of other civilizations, they make them- selves the butts of all right-thinking men; and yet the necessity certainly exists to give this warning to many of 5 our citizens who pride themselves on their standing in the world of art and letters, or, perchance, on what they would style their social leadership in the community. It is always better to be an original than an imitation, even when the imitation is of something better than the original; lo but what shall we say of the fool who is content to be an imitation of something worse? Even if the weaklings who seek to be other than Americans were right in deem- ing other nations to be better than their own, the fact yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold 15 better than to be a second-class imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman. As a matter of fact, however, those of our countrymen who do believe in American inferiority are always individuals who, however cultivated, have some organic weakness in their moral or mental make-up; 20 and the great mass of our people, who are robustly patri- otic, and who have sound, healthy minds, are justified in regarding these feeble renegades with a half-impatient and half-amused scorn. We believe in waging relentless war on rank-growing 25 evils of all kinds, and it makes no difference to us if they happen to be of purely native growth. We grasp at any good, no matter whence it comes. We do not accept the evil attendant upon another system of government as an adequate excuse for that attendant upon our own; the 30 fact that the courtier is a scamp does not render the dema- gogue any the less a scoundrel. But it remains true that, 156 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS in spite of all our faults and shortcomings, no other land offers such glorious possibilities to the man able to take advantage of them, as does ours; it remains true that no one of our people can do any work really worth doing 5 unless he does it primarily as an American. It is because certain classes of our people still retain their spirit of colonial dependence on, and exaggerated deference to, European opinion, that they fail to accomplish what they ought to. It is precisely along the lines where we have 10 worked most independently that we have accomplished the greatest results; and it is in those professions where there has been no servility to, but merely a wise profiting by, foreign experience, that we have produced our greatest men. Our soldiers and statesmen and orators; our explor- isers, our wilderness-winners and commonwealth-builders; the men who have made our laws and seen that they were executed; and the other men whose energy and ingenuity have created our marvellous material prosperity, — all these have been men who have drawn wisdom from the 20 experience of every age and nation, but who have never- theless thought, and worked, and conquered, and lived, and died, purely as Americans; and on the whole they have done better work than has been done in any other country during the short period of our national Hfe. 25 On the other hand, it is in those professions where our people have striven hardest to mould themselves in con- ventional European forms that they have suceeded least; and this holds true to the present day, the failure being of course most conspicuous where the man takes up his abode 30 in Europe; where he becomes a second-rate European, because he is over-civilized, over-sensitive, over-refined, and has lost the hardihood and manly courage by which TRUE AMERICANISM 157 alone he can conquer in the keen struggle of our national life. Be it remembered, too, that this same being does not really become a European; he only ceases being an American, and becomes nothing. He throws away a great prize for the sake of a lesser one, and does not even 5 get the lesser one. The painter who goes to Paris, not merely to get two or three years ^ thorough training in his art, but with the deliberate purpose of taking up his abode there, and with the intention of following in the ruts worn deep by ten thousand earlier travellers, in- lo stead of striking off to rise or fall on a new line, thereby forfeits all chance of doing the best work. He must con- tent himself with aiming at that kind of mediocrity which consists in doing fairly well what has already been done better; and he usually never even sees the grandeur and i5 picturesqueness lying open before the eyes of every man who can read the book of Americans past and the book of Americans present. Thus it is with the undersized man of letters, who flees his country because he, with his deh- cate, effeminate sensitiveness, finds the conditions of 20 life on this side of the water crude and raw; in other words, because he finds that he cannot play a man^s part among men, and so goes where he will be sheltered from the winds that harden stouter souls. This emigre may write grace- ful and pretty verses, essays, novels ; but he will never do 25 work to compare with that of his brother, who is strong enough to stand on his own feet, and do his work as an American. Thus it is with the scientist who spends his youth in a German university, and can thenceforth work only in the fields already fifty times furrowed by 30 the German ploughs. Thus it is with that most foolish of parents who sends his children to be educated abroad, not 158 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS knowing — what every clear-sighted man from Washington and Jay down has known — that the American who is to make his way in America should be brought up among his fellow Americans. It is among the people who like to 5 consider themselves, and, indeed, to a large extent are, the leaders of the so-called social world, especially in some of the northeastern cities, that this colonial habit of thought, this thoroughly provincial spirit of admiration for things foreign, and inability to stand on one's own feet, becomes 10 most evident and most despicable. We thoroughly be- lieve in every kind of honest and lawful pleasure, so long as the getting it is not made man's chief business; and we beheve heartily in the good that can be done by men of leisure who work hard in their leisure, whether at politics 15 or philanthropy, literature or art. But a leisure class whose leisure simply means idleness is a curse to the com- munity, and in so far as its members distinguish them- selves chiefly by aping the worst — not the best — traits of similar people across the water, they become both comic 20 and noxious elements of the body politic. "The third sense in which the word '^ Americanism" may be employed is with reference to the Americanizing of the newcomers to our shores. We must Americanize them in every way, in speech, in political ideas and principles, and 25 in their way of looking at the relations between Church and State. We welcome the German or the Irishman who be- comes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German- Americans and Irish- Americans who figure as such in our 30 social and political life; we want only Americans, and, pro- vided they are such, we do not care whether they are of na- tive or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in TRUE AMERICANISM 159 any healthy American community for a German- American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, 5 and as nothing else. Moreover, we have as little use for people who carry religious prejudices into our politics as for those who carry prejudices of caste or nationality. We stand unalterably in favor of the public-school system in its entirety. We believe that the English, and no other lo language, is that in which all the school exercises should be conducted. We are against any division of the school fund, and against any appropriation of public money for sectarian purposes. We are against any recognition whatever by the State in any shape or form of State- is aided parochial schools. But we are equally opposed to any discrimination against or for a man because of his creed. We demand that all citizens, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, shall have fair treatment in every way; that all alike shall have their rights guaranteed 20 them. The very reasons that make us unqualified in our opposition to State-aided sectarian schools make us equally bent that, in the management of our public schools, the adherents of each creed shall be given exact and equal justice, wholly without regard to their religious affihations; 25 that trustees, superintendents, teachers, scholars, all alike, shall be treated without any reference whatsoever to the creed they profess. We maintain that it is an outrage, in voting for a man for any position, whether State or national, to take into account his religious faith, provided only he 30 is a good American. When a secret society does what in some places the American Protective Association seems 160 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS to have done, and tries to proscribe Catholics both poUtically and socially, the members of such society show that they themselves are as utterly un-American, as alien to our school of political thought, as the worst immigrants 5 who land on our shores. This conduct is equally base and contemptible; they are the worst foes of our pubUc-school system, because they strengthen the hands of its ultra- montane enemies; they should receive the hearty con- demnation of all Americans who are truly patriotic. 10 The mighty tide of immigration to our shores has brought in its train much of good and much of evil; and whether the good or the evil shall predominate depends mainly on whether these newcomers do or do not throw themselves heartily into our national life, cease to be 15 European, and become Americans like the rest of us. More than a third of the people of the Northern States are of foreign birth or parentage. An immense number of them have become completely Americanized, and these stand on exactly the same plane as the descend- 20 ants of any Puritan, Cavalier, or Knickerbocker among us, and do their full and honorable share of the nation's work. But where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, 25 the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they thereby harm both them- selves and us . If they remain alien elements , unassimilated , and with interests separate from ours, they are mere ob- structions to the current of our national life, and, more- 30 over, can get no good from it themselves. In fact, though we ourselves also suffer from their perversity, it is they who really suffer most. It is an immense benefit to the TRUE AMERICANISM 161 European immigrant to change him into an American citizen. To bear the name of American is to bear the most honorable of titles; and whoever does not so be- lieve has no business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes from Europe, the sooner he goes back there the 5 better. Besides, the man who does not become American- ized nevertheless fails to remain a European and be- comes nothing at all. The immigrant cannot possibly remain what he was, or continue to be a member of the Old World society. If he tries to retain his old language, in lo a few generations it becomes a barbarous jargon; if he tries to retain his old customs and ways of Ufe, in a few generations he becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut himself off from the Old World, and cannot retain his connection with it; and if he wishes ever to amount to 15 anything he must throw himself heart and soul, and without reservation, into the new life to which he has come. So, from his own standpoint, it is beyond all question the wise thing for the immigrant to become thoroughly 20 Americanized. Moreover, from our standpoint, we have a right to demand it. We freely extend the hand of welcome and of good-fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the 25 rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by in- troducing among us Old-World quarrels and prejudices. There are certain ideas which he must give up. For in- 30 stance, he must learn that American life is incompatible with the existence of any form of anarchy, or, indeed. 162 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS of any secret society having murder for its aim, whether at home or abroad; and he must learn that we exact full religious toleration and the complete separation of Church and State. Moreover, he must not bring in his 5 Old World race and national antipathies, but must merge them into love for our common country, and must take pride in the things which we can all take pride in. He must revere only our flag; not only must it come first, but no other flag should even come second. 10 He must learn to celebrate Washington's birthday rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the Fourth of July instead of St. Patrick's Day. Our political and social questions must be settled on their own merits, and not complicated by quarrels between England and Ireland, 15 or France and Germany, with which we have nothing to do: it is an outrage to fight an American political cam- paign with reference to questions of European politics. Above all, the immigrant must learn to talk and think and he United States. 20 The immigrant of to-day can learn much from the experience of the immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. Many of our most illustrious Revolutionary names were borne by men of Huguenot blood — Jay,° Sevier,° Marion,^ Laurens. ° 25 But the Huguenots were, on the whole, the best immi- grants we have ever received; sooner than any other, and more completely, they became American in speech, con- viction, and thought. The Hollanders took longer than the Huguenots to become completely assimilated; never- sotheless they in the end became so, immensely to their own advantage. One of the leading Revolutionary gen- erals, Schuyler,° and one of the Presidents of the United TRUE AMERICANISM ^ 163 States, Van Buren,° were of Dutch blood; but they rose to their positions, the highest in the land, because they had become Americans and had ceased being Hollanders. If the}^ had remained members of an alien body, cut off by their speech and customs and belief from the rest of 5 the American community, Schuyler would have lived his life as a boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren would have ended his days a small tavern-keeper. So it is with the Germans of Pennsjdvania. Those of them who be- came Americanized have furnished to our history a mul- lo titude of honorable names, from the days of the Allihlen- bergs° onward; but those who did not become Americanized form to the present day an unimportant body, of no significance in American existence. So it is with the Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such names as 15 Carrol° and Sullivan, ° and to the Ci\dl War men like Sheridan° and Shields, ° — all men who were Americans and nothing else: while the Irish who remain such, and busy themselves solely with alien politics, can have only an unhealthy influence upon American hfe, and can 20 never rise as do their compatriots who become straight- out Americans. Thus it has ever been ^vith all people who have come hither, of whatever stock or blood. But I wish to be distinctly understood on one point. Americanism is a question of spirit, convictions, and pur- 25 pose, not of creed or birthplace. The politician who bids for the Irish or German vote, or the Irishman or German who votes as an Irishman or German, is despicable, for all citizens of this commonwealth should vote solely as Americans; but he is not a whit less despicable than the 30 voter who votes against a good American, merely be- cause that American happens to have been born in Ire- 164 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS land or Germany. Know-nothingism, in any form, is as utterly un-American as foreignism. It is a base out- rage to oppose a man because of his religion or birth- place, and all good citizens will hold any such effort in 5 abhorrence. A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irish- man who has really become an American has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native-born citizen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the friendship and support, social and political, of his 10 neighbors. Among the men with whom I have been thrown in close personal contact socially, and who have been among my staun chest friends and alhes politically, are not a few Americans who happen to have been born on the other side of the w^ater, in Germany, Ireland, 15 Scandinavia; and I know no better men in the ranks of our native-born citizens. In closing, I cannot better express the ideal attitude that should be taken by our fellow-citizens of foreign birth than by quoting the words of a representative 20 American, born in Germany, the Honorable Richard Guenther, of Wisconsin. In a speech spoken at the time of the Samoan trouble, ° he said: " We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duties belong. We will work for our country 25 in time of peace and fight for it in time of war, if a time of war should ever come. When I say our country, I mean, of course, our adopted country. I mean the United States of America. After passing through the crucible of naturahzation, we are no longer Germans; we are 30 Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment we touch the American TRUE AMERICANISM • 165 shore until we are laid in American graves. We will fight for America whenever necessary. America, first, last, and all the time. America against Germany, America against the world; America, right or wrong; always America. We are Americans. " 5 All honor to the man who spoke such words as those; and I believe they express the feelings of the great majority of those among our fellow-American citizens who were born abroad. We Americans can only do our allotted task well if we face it steadily and bravely, seeing but lo not fearing the dangers. Above all we must stand shoul- der to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, and that we all work together, heart, hand, and head, for the honor and the greatness 15 of our common country. THE STRENUOUS LIFE ^ Gentlemen: — In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the coun- try Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and dis- tinctly embody all that is most American in the Ameri- 5 can character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from 10 danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A hfe of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an 15 individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself, and from his sons, shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace is to be the first consideration in your eyes — to be the ulti- 20 mate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Ilhnois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doc- trine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons 25 to work. If you are rich, and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure ^ Reprinted by permission from The Streniious Life, copy- righted by The Century Company. 166 THE STRENUOUS LIFE 167 merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their Hvehhood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in his- torical research — work of the type we most need in this 5 country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor; who is prompt to help a lo friend; but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual hfe. It is hard to fail; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present, merely means that there has been stored up is effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus pur- chased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, 20 whether in the field of politics or in the field of explora- tion and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period not of preparation but of mere enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the 25 earth^s surface; and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a satisfactory life, and above all it is a hfe which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. 30 As it is with the individual so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to sa}^ that happy is the nation that has 168 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glori- ous history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take ranl<: with those poor spirits who neither enjoy 5 much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twi- hght that knows neither victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things and war and strife a worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have 10 saved hundreds of thousands of hves, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heart-break of many women, the dis- solution of many homes; and we would have spared the 15 country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it we would have shown that we were weaklings and that we were unfit to stand among 20 the great nations of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wis- dom of Lincoln and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days — let us, the children 25 of the men who carried the great Civil War to a trium- phant conclusion, praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected, that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair, were un- flinchingly faced and the years of strife endured; for in 30 the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American Republic placed once more as a hel- meted queen among nations. THE STRENUOUS LIFE 169 We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them! We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest ins what goes on beyond them; sunk in a scrambhng com- merciahsm; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspira- tion, of toil and risk; busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day; until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already lo found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play is a great part in the* world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. Last year we could not help being brought face to face with the prob- lem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether 20 we should shrink like cowards from the contest or enter into it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people; and, once in, whether failure or success should crown our ban- ners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the 25 PhiHppines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing 30 wdth them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If "we undertake the solution there is, of course, always dan- 170 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS ger that we may not solve it aright, but to refuse to under- take the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts 5 his country, the overcivilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills ^^ stern men with empires in their brains'' — all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation under- 10 take its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a navy and army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work by bringing order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. 15 These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, as it saps them in the individual; or else they are wedded to that base spirit of gain and greed which 20 recognizes in commercialism the be-all and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though an indis- pensable element, it is after all but one of the many ele- ments that go to make up true national greatness. No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid 25 deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor must be paid to the archi- 3otects of our material prosperity; to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads; to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; THE STRENUOUS LIFE 171 for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win as competence for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier duties — duties to the nation and duties to the race. We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and lo avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do huck- sters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own is in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the Isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the 20 West. ... I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The Twentieth Century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if 2S we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world. 30 Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold right- 172 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS eousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we 5 are certain that the strife is justified; for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness. OUR RESPONSIBILITIES AS A NATION No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large as measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a peo- ple it has been granted to lay the foundations of our na- tional life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of lo a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manher and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the is success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vain glory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; ana 20 a fixed determination to show that under a free govern- ment a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul. Much has been given to us, and much will rightly be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties 25 to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have be- come a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth; and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsi- 173 174 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS bilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will 5 by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less in- 10 sistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear 15 us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. Our relations with the other Powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, 20 and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers 25 faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was im- possible that they should foresee. Modern hfe is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last 30 half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering OUR RESPONSIBILITIES AS A NATION 175 the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions, which have told for our mar- velous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety ia-s separable from the accumulation of great wealth in in- dustrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock lo to its foundations; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future but there is every good reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from our- 15 selves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinch- ing purpose to solve them aright. Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before 20 our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self- government is difficult. We know that no people needs 25 such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us 30 the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to 176 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of 5 hardihood and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Repubhc in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln. THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE Over a century ago Washington laid the corner-stone of the Capitor in what was then httle more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the Government. This growth in the 5 need for the housing of the Government is but a proof and example of the way in which the Nation has grown and the sphere of action of the National Government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a Nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been lo outstripped bj^ the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests. The natural problems that face us to-day are not such as they were in Washington's time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form we war is with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in Washington's time, and are helped by the same tend- encies for good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word to-day. In Bunyan's° ^* Pilgrim's Progress" you may recall the 20 description of the Man with the Muck-rake,° the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck- rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to him-2S self the filth of the floor. In *^ Pilgrim's Progress" the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies 177 178 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS the man who in this hfe consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is 5 vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this ser\dce is the most needed of all ^the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or 10 writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for e\dl. There are, in the body politic, economic, and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for 15 the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a bene- factor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the 20 platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merci- less severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he 25 may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm. The soul of 30 every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed. Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE 179 said, easy to affect to misunderstand it, and, if it is slurred over in repetition, not difficult really to misunderstand it. Some persons are sincerely incapable of understand- ing that to denounce mud-slinging does not mean the indorsement of whitewashing; and both the interested 5 individuals who need whitewashing, and those others who practice mud-slinging, like to encourage such con- fusion of ideas. One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction which lo is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the peni- tentiary. If Aristides° is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it; and overcensure of the unjust finally 15 and from similar reasons results in their favor. Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reaction, instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is very apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending 20 or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid 25 and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensi- tiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. As an instance in point, I may mention that one serious difficulty encountered in getting 30 the right type of men to dig the Panama Canal° is the certainty that they will be exposed, both without, and, I 180 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS am sorry to say, sometimes within, Congress, to utterly reckless assaults on their character and capacity. At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is, not for immunity to but for the most unsparing ex- 5 posure of the pohtician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegiti- mate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has dis- graced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; 10 but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is at- tacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I 15 ask that the war be conducted mth sanity as well as with resolution. The men with the muck-rakes are often in- dispensable to the well-being of societ}^; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy 20 endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the w^hole world is nothing but muck, their power of useful- ness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black, there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for dis- 25 tinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color-blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but that all are gray. In other words, they believe neither in the truth of the attack, nor in the 30 honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as sus- picious of the accusation as of the offence; it becomes well- nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrong- THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE 181 doing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the pubhc gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men. To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping gener- 5 alizations as to include decent men in the general con- demnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of cynical behef in and indifference to public corruption or else of a dis- trustful inability to discriminate between the good and lo the bad. Either attitude is fraught with untold damage / to the country as a whole. The fool who has not sense / to discriminate between what is good and what is bad / is well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discrim- inate and yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more is distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a pubhc man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns° under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the 20 heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition. There is anj^ amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. 2s The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked thing, to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, 30 but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism 182 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who, with stern sobriety and truth, assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders 5 and allies of all engaged in the work for social and politi- cal betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men 10 against whom they are nominally at war. In his ^^Ecclesiastical PoHty'^° that fine old Elizabethan divine. Bishop Hooker, wrote : ^^He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall 15 never want attentive and favorable hearers, because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regi- men is subject; but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider." 20 This truth should be kept constantly in mind by every free people desiring to preserve the sanity and poise indispensable to the permanent success of self-government. Yet, on the other hand, it is vital not to permit this spirit of sanity and self-command to degenerate into mere mental 25 stagnation. Bad though a state of hysterical excitement is, and evil though the results are which come from the violent oscillations such excitement invariably produces, yet a sodden acquiescence in evil is even worse. At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest — 30 social, political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dis- THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE 183 satisfaction with the inevitable inequaUty of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the individual and the Nation. So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country- takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a deter- 5 mination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy Ufe. If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appetite against appetite, a contest between the brutal 10 greed of the ^^ have-nots'^ and the brutal greed of the ^^ haves,'' then it has no significance for good, but only for evil. If it seeks to estabhsh a, line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto, which 15 divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body pohtic. We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The 20 wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of jus- tice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so- called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who 25 is implicated in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime. There is nothing more anti-social 30 in a democratic republic hke ours than such vicious class- consciousness. The multi-millionaires who band together 1;S4 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS to prevent the enactment of proper laws for the supervision of the use of wealth, or to assail those who resojutely en- force such laws, or to exercise a hidden influence upon the poUtical destinies of parties or individuals in their own 5 personal interest, are a menace to the whole community; and a menace at least as great is offered by those laboring men who band together to defy the law, and by their openly used influence to coerce law-upholding public officials. The apologists for either class of offenders are 10 themselves enemies of good citizenship; and incidentally they are also, to a peculiar degree, the enemies of every honest-dealing corporation and every law-abiding labor union. It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to 15 result in permanent good the emotion shall be trans- lated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous 20 growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion. It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous for- tunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in 25 the sharpest way between fortunes well won and fortunes ill won; between those gained as an incident to perform- ing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the hmits of mere law-honesty. Of course no matter of charity in 30 spending such fortunes in any way compensates for mis- conduct in making them. As a matter of personal con- viction, and without pretending to discuss the details THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE 185 or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual — a tax so framed as to puts it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State Government. Such taxa- tion should, of course, be aimed merely at the inherit- lo ance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits. ^ Again, the National Government must in some form exercise supervision over corporations engaged in inter- State business — and all large corporations are engaged in 15 inter-State business,— whether by license or otherwise, so as to permit us to deal with the far-reaching evils of over-capitalization. This year we are making a beginning in the direction of serious effort to settle some of these economic problems by the railway rate legislation. Such 20 legislation, if so framed, as I am sure it will be, as to secure definil^ and tangible results, will amount to some- thing of itself; and it will amount to a great deal more in so far as it is taken as a first step in the direction of a policy of superintendence and control over corporate 25 wealth engaged in inter-State commerce, this super- intendence and control not to be exercised in a spirit of malevolence toward the men who have created the secure definite and tangible results, will amount to some wealth, but with the firm purpose both to do justice to 30 them and to see that they in their turn do justice to the public at large. 186 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS The first requisite in the public servants who are to deal in this shape with corporations, whether as legisla- tors or as executives, is honesty. This honesty can be no respecter of persons. There can be no such thing as 5 unilateral honesty. The danger is not really from corrupt corporations : it springs from the corruption itself, whether exercised for or against corporations. The eighth commandment reads, ^^Thou shalt not steal. ^' It does not read, ''Thou shalt not steal from the 10 rich man.'^ It does not read, ''Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.'' It reads simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal." No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at 15 their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to 20 protect the rights of the public against the misdeeds of a corporation is that public man whx) will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, 25 it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation. But, in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No hon- esty will make a public man useful if that man is timid 30 or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform we find that it is not at all merely the case of a long uphill pull. On the con- THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE 187 trary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work; to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runawaj^ and an upset. The men of wealth who to-day are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the pubhc b}^ 5 the proper Government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlmnd, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which 10 accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth. On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the vAXd. agitators against the entire exist- ing order, the men who act crookedl}^, whether because 15 of sinister design or from mere puzzle-headedness, the men who preach destruction ^dthout proposing any sub- stitute for what they intend to destroy, or who propose a substitute which would be far worse than the existing evils — all these men are the most dangerous opponents of 20 real reform. If they get their wa}^, they will lead the people into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall under the present sj^stem. If they fail to get their way, they will still do incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its revolt against the senseless 25 evil of their teaching, would enthrone more securely than ever the very evils which their misguided followers believe the}" are attacldng. More important than aught else is the development of the broadcast sympathy of man for man. The welfare of 30 the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil — upon this depends the welfare of the entire country; their good 188 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship. Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better 5 chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spirit- uall}^ and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we appreciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. 10 The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN NATION At the outset I wish to say a word of special greeting to the representatives of the foreign governments here present. They have come to assist us in celebrating ° what was in very truth the birthday of this nation, for it was here that the colonists first settled,^ whose incoming, 5 whose growth from their own loins and by the addition of newcomers from abroad, was to make the people which one hundred and sixty-nine years later assumed the solemn responsibilities and weighty duties of complete indepen- dence. 10 In welcoming all of you I must say a special word, first to the representative of the people of Great Britain and Ireland. The fact that so many of our people, of whom as it happens I myself am one, have but a very small por- tion of English blood in our veins, in no way alters the 15 other fact that this nation was founded by EngUshmen, by the Cavaher and the Puritan.^ Their tongue, law, literature, the fund of their common thought, made an inheritance which all of us share, and marked deep the lines along which we have developed. It was the men of 20 English stock who did most in casting the mold into which our national character was run. Let me furthermore greet all of you, the representatives of the people of continental Europe. From almost every nation of Europe we have drawn some part of our blood, 25 some part of our traits. This mixture of blood has gone on from the beginning, and with it has gone on a kind of development unexampled among peoples of the stock from 189 190 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS which we spring; and hence to-day we differ sharply from, and yet in some ways are fundamentally akin to, all of the nations of Europe. Again, let me bid you welcome, representatives of our 5 sister Republics of this continent. In the larger aspect, your interests and ours are identical. Your problems and ours are in large part the same; and as we strive to settle them, I pledge you herewith on the part of this nation the heartiest friendship and good will. 10 Finally, let me say a special word of greeting to those representatives of the Asiatic nations who make up that newest East which is yet the most ancient East, the East of time immemorial. In particular, let me express a word of hearty welcome to the representative of the mighty 15 island empire of Japan; that empire, which, in learning from the West, has shown that it had so much, so very much, to teach the West in return. To all of you here gathered I express my thanks for your coming, and I extend to you my earnest wishes for 20 the welfare of j^our several nations. The world has moved so far that it is no longer necessary to believe that one nation can rise only by thrusting another down. All far- sighted statesmen, all true patriots, now earnestly wish that the leading nations of mankind, as in their several 25 ways they struggle constantly toward a higher civiliza- tion, a higher humanity, may advance hand in hand, united only in a generous rivalry to see which can best do its allotted work in the world. I believe that there is a ris- ing tide in human thought which tends for righteous in- 30 ternational peace; a tide which it behooves us to guide through rational channels to sane conclusions; and all of us here present can well afford to take to heart St. Paul's DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 191 counsel: ^^If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men/^ We have met to-day to celebrate the opening of the Exposition which itself commemorates the first permanent settlement of men of our stock in Virginia, the first be- 5 ginning of what has since become this mighty RepubUc. Three hundred years ago a handful of English adven- turers, who had crossed the ocean in what we should now call cockle-boats, as clumsy as they were frail, landed in the great wooded wilderness, the Indian-haunted waste, 10 which then stretched down to the water's edge along the entire Atlantic coast. They were not the first men of European race to settle in what is now the United States, for there were already Spanish settlements in Florida and on the headwaters of the Rio Grande; and the French, is who at almost the same time were struggling up the St. Lawrence, were likewise destined to form permanent set- tlements on the Great Lakes and in the valley of the Mississippi before the people of English stock went west- ward of the Alleghenies. Moreover, both the Dutch and 20 the Swedes were shortly to found colonies between the two sets of English colonies, those that grew up around the Potomac and those that grew up on what is now the New England Coast. Nevertheless, this landing at Jamestown possesses for us of the United States an alto- 25 gether peculiar significance, and this without regard to our several origins. The men who landed at James toAvn and those who, thirteen years later, landed at Plymouth, all of English stock, and their fellow-settlers who during the next few decades streamed in after them, were those 30 who took the lead in shaping the life history of this people in the colonial and revolutionary days. It was they who 192 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS bent into definite shape our nation while it was still young enough most easily, most readily, to take on the char- acteristics which were to become part of its permanent life habit. 5 Yet let us remember that while this early English colo- nial stock has left deeper than all others upon our national life the mark of its strong twin individualities, the mark of the Cavalier and of the Puritan — nevertheless, this stock, not only from its environment but also from the 10 presence with it of other stocks, almost from the beginning began to be differentiated strongly from any European people. As I have already said, about the time the first English settlers landed here, the Frenchman and the Spaniard, the Swede and the Dutchman, also came hither 15 as permanent dwellers, who left their seed beliind them to help shape and partially to inherit our national Hfe. The German, the Irishman, and the Scotchman came later, but still in colonial times. Before the outbreak of the Revolution the American people, not only because of 20 their surroundings, physical and spiritual, but because of the mixture of blood that had already begun to take place, represented a new and distinct ethnic type. This type has never been fixed in blood. All through the colo- nial days new waves of immigration from time to time 25 swept hither across the ocean, now from one country, now from another. The same thing has gone on ever since our birth as a nation; and for the last sixty years the tide of immigi'ation has been at the full. The newcomers are sot)n absorbed into our eager national life, and are 30 radically and profoundly changed thereby, the rapidity of their assimilation being marvelous. But each gi'oup of newcomers, as it adds its blood to the life, also changes DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 193 it somewhat, and this change and growth and development have gone on steadily, generation by generation, through- out three centuries. The pioneers of our people who first landed on these shores on that eventful day three centuries ago, had be- 5 fore them a task which during the early years was of heartbreaking danger and difficulty. The conquest of a new continent is iron work. People who dwell in old civilizations and find that therein so much of humanity^s lot is hard, are apt to complain against the conditions as lo being solely due to man and to speak as if life could be made easy and simple if there were but a virgin continent in which to work. It is true that the pioneer life was simpler, but it was certainly not easier. As a matter of fact, the first work of the pioneers in taking possession 15 of a lonely wilderness is so rough, so hard, so dangerous that all but the strongest spirits fail. The early iron days of such a conquest search out alike the weak in body and the weak in soul. In the warfare against the rugged sternness of primeval Nature, only those can conquer 20 who are themselves unconquerable. It is not until the first bitter years have passed that the life becomes easy enough to invite a mass of newcomers, and so great are the risk, hardship, and toil of the early years that there always exists a threat of lapsing back from civihzation. 25 The history of the pioneers of Jamestown, of the founders of Virginia, illustrates the truth of all this. Famine and pestilence and war menaced the Httle band of daring men who had planted themselves alone on the edge of a frowning continent. Moreover, as men ever 30 find, whether in the tiniest frontier community or in the vastest and most highly organized and complex civiHzed 194 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS society, their worst foes were in their own bosoms. Dis- sension, distrust, the inabiUty of some to work and the unwiUingness of others, jealousy arrogance and envy, folly and laziness — in short all the shortcomings with 5 which we have to grapple now, were faced by those pioneers, and at moments threatened their whole enter- prise with absolute ruin. It was some time before the ground on which the}^ had landed supported them, in spite of its potential fertility, and they looked across the 10 sea for supplies. At one moment so hopeless did they be- come that the whole colony embarked, and was only saved from abandoning the country by the opportune arrival of help from abroad. At last they took root in the land, and were already 15 prospering when the Pilgrims landed at Pl^miouth. In a few years a great inflow of settlers began. Four of the present States of New England were founded. Virginia waxed apace. The Carolinas grew up to thfc south of it, and Maryland to the north of it. The Dutch colonies 20 between, which had already absorbed the Swedish, were in their turn absorbed by the English. Pennsylvania was founded and, later still, Georgia. There were many wars with the Indians and with the dauntless captains whose banners bore the lihes of France. At last the British flag 25 flew without a rival in all eastern North America. Then came the successful struggle for national independence. For half a century after we became a separate nation there was comparatively little immigration to this country. Then the tide once again set hither, and has flowed in soever-increasing size until in each of the last three years a greater number of people came to these shores than had landed on them during the entire colonial period. DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 195 Generation by generation these people have been ab- sorbed into the national life. Generally their sons, almost always their grandsons, are indistinguishable from one another and from their fellow-Americans descended from the colonial stock. For all alike the problems of our ex- 5 istence are fundamentally the same, and for all alike these problems change from generation to generation. In the colonial period, and for at least a century after its close, the conquest of the continent, the expansion of our people westward, to the AUeghenies, then to the Mis- lo sissippi, then to the Pacific, was always one of the most important tasks, and sometimes the most important, in our national life. Behind the first settlers the condi- tions grew easier, and in the older-settled regions of all the colonies life speedily assumed much of comfort and is something of luxury; and though generally it was on a much more democratic basis than life in the Old World, it was by no means democratic when judged by our modern standards; and here and there, as in the tide- water regions of Virginia, a genuine aristocracy grew and 20 flourished. But the men who first broke ground in the virgin wilderness, whether on the Atlantic coast, or in the interior, fought hard for mere life. In the early stages the frontiersman had to do battle with the savage, and when the savage was vanquished there remained the 25 harder strain of war with the hostile forces of soil and cUmate, with flood, fever, and famine. There was sick- ness, and bitter weather; there were no roads; there was a complete lack of all but the very roughest and most ab- solute necessaries. Under such circumstances the men 30 and women w^ho made ready the continent for civilization were able themselves to spend but little time in doing 196 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS aught but the rough work which was to make smooth the ways of their successors. In consequence observers whose insight was spoiled by lack of sjTiipathy always found both the settlers and their lives unattractive and 5 repellent. In Martin Chuzzlewit° the description of America, culminating in the description of the frontier town of Eden, was true and lifelike from the standpoint of one content to look merely at the outer shell; and yet it was a community like Eden that gave birth to Abraham 10 Lincoln; it was men such as were therein described from whose loins Andrew Jackson° sprang. Hitherto each generation among us has had its allotted task, now heavier, now lighter. In the Revolutionary War the business was to achieve independence. Immedi- 15 ately afterwards there was an even more momentous task; that to achieve the national unity and the capacity for orderly development, without which our liberty, our independence, would have been a curse and not a blessing. In each of these two contests, while there were many 20 great leaders from many different States, it is but fair to say that the foremost place was taken by the soldiers and the statesmen of Virginia; and to Virginia w^as reserved the honor of producing the hero of both movements, the hero of the war, and of the peace that made good the re- 25 suits of the war — George Washington; while the two great political tendencies of the time can be symbolized by the names of two other great Virginians — Jefferson^ and Marshair — from one of whom we inherit the abiding trust in the people which is the foundation stone of de- 3omocracy, and from the other the power to develop on be- half of the people a coherent and powerful government, a genuine and representative nationality. DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 197 Two generations passed before the second great crisis of our history had to be faced. Then came the Civil War, terrible and bitter in itself and in its aftermath, but a struggle from which the Nation finally emerged united in fact as well as in name, united forever. Oh, my hear- 5 ers, my fellow countrymen, great indeed has been our good fortune; for as time clears away the mists that once shrouded brother from brother and made each look ^^as through a glass darkly ^^ at the other, we can all feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion and the fealty toward lo the right as it was given to each to see the right, showTi alike by the men Avho wore the blue and by the men who wore the gray. Rich and prosperous though we are as a people, the proudest heritage that each of us has, no matter where he may dwell. North or South, East or West, is the 15 immaterial heritage of feeling, the right to claim as his own all the valor and all the steadfast devotion to duty shown by the men of both the great armies, of the soldiers whose leader was Grant° and the soldiers whose leader was Lee.° The men and the women of the Civil War did 20 their duty bravely and well in the days that were dark and terrible and splendid. We, their descendants, who pay proud homage to their memories, and glory in the feats of might of one side no less than of the other, need to keep steadily in mind that the homage which counts is the hom- 26 age of heart and of hand, and not of the hps, the homage of deeds and not of words only. We, too, in our turn,, must prove our truth by our endeavor. We must show ourselves worthy sons of the men of the mighty days by the way in which we meet the problems of our own time. 30 We carry our heads high because our fathers did well in the years that tried men's souls; and we must in our turn 198 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS SO bear ourselves that the children who come after us may feel that we too have done our duty. We can not afford to forget the maxim° upon which Washington insisted, that the surest way to avert war is 5 to be prepared to meet it. Nevertheless the duties that most concern us of this generation are not military, but social and industrial. Each community must always dread the evils which spring up as attendant upon the very qualities which give it success. We of this mighty 10 western Republic have to grapple with the dangers that spring from popular self-government tried on a scale incomparably vaster than ever before in the history of mankind, and from an abounding material prosperity greater also than anything which the world has hitherto 15 seen. As regards the first set of dangers, it behooves us to re- member that men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. If from lawlessness or fickle- 2oness, from folly or self-indulgence, they refuse to govern themselves, then most assuredly in the end they will have to be governed from the outside. They can prevent the need of government from without only by showing that they possess the power of government from within. A 25 sovereign can not make excuses for his failures; a sov- ereign must accept the responsibility for the exercise of the power that inheres in him; and where, as is true in our Republic, the people are sovereign, then the people must show a sober understanding and a sane and steadfast pur- 30 pose if they are to preserve that orderly liberty upon which as a foundation every republic must rest. In industrial matters our enormous prosperity has DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 199 brought with it certain grave evils. It is our duty to try to cut out these evils without at the same time destroy- ing our well-being itself. This is an era of combination alike in the world of capital and in the world of labor. Each kind of combination can do good, and yet each, 5 however powerful, must be opposed when it does ill. At the moment the greatest problem before us is how to ex- ercise such control over the business use of vast wealth, individual, but especially corporate, as will insure its not being used against the interest of the public, while yet lo permitting such ample legitimate profits as will encourage individual initiative. It is our business to put a stop to abuses and to prevent their recurrence, without showing a spirit of mere vindictiveness for what has been done in the past. In John Morley^s brilliant sketch^ of Burke he i5 lays especial stress upon the fact that Burke more than almost any other thinker or politician of his time realized the profound lesson that in politics we are concerned not with barren rights but with duties; not with abstract truth, but with practical morality. He especially eulo-20 gizes the way in which in his efforts for economic reform, Burke combined unshakable resolution in pressing the reform with a profound temperateness of spirit which made him, while bent on the extirpation of the evil system, refuse to cherish an unreasoning and vindictive ill will 25 toward the men who had benefited by it. Said Burke, ^^If I can not reform with equity, I will not reform at all. . . . (There is) a state to preserve as well as a state to reform.^^ This is the exact spirit in which this country should move 30 to the reform of abuses of corporate wealth. The wrong- doer, the man who swindles and cheats, whether on a big 200 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS scale or a little one, shall receive at our hands mercy as scant as if he committed crimes of violence or brutaUty. We are unalterably determined to prevent wrongdoing in the future; we have no intention of trying to wreak 5 such an indiscriminate vengeance for . wrongs done in the past as would confound the innocent with the guilty. Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down. We show ourselves the truest friends of property when we make it evident that we ^dll not tolerate the abuses of 10 property. We are steadily bent on preserving the insti- tution of private property; we combat every tendency toward reducing the people to economic servitude; and we care not whether the tendency is due to a sinister agita- tion directed against all property, or whether it is due to 15 the actions of those members of the predatory classes whose anti-social power is immeasurably increased be- cause of the very fact that they possess wealth. Above all, we insist that while facing changed conditions and new problems, we must face them in the spirit which 20 our forefathers showed when they founded and preserved this Republic. The corner-stone of the Republic lies in our treating each man on his worth as a man, paying no heed to his creed, his birthplace, or his occupation, ask- ing not whether he is rich or poor, whether he labors with 25 head or hand; asking only whether he acts decently and honorably in the various relations of his life, whether he behaves well to his family, to his neighbors, to the State. We base our regard for each man on the essentials and not the accidents. We judge him not by his profession, 30 but by his deeds; by his conduct, not by what he has acquired of this world's goods. Other republics have fallen, because the citizens gradually grew to consider the DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN NATION 201 interests of a class before the interests of the whole; for when such was the case it mattered httle whether it was the poor who plundered the rich or the rich who exploited the poor; in either event the end of the Republic was at hand. We are resolute in our purpose not to fall into 5 such a pit. This great Republic of ours shall never be- come the government of a plutocracy, and it shall never become the government of a mob. God willing, it shall remain what our fathers who founded it meant it to be — a government in which each man stands on his worth as lo a man, where each is given the largest personal liberty consistent with securing the well-being of the whole, and where, so far as in us lies, we strive continually to secure for each man such equality of opportunity that in the strife of life he may have a fair chance to show the stuff 15 that is in him. We are proud of our schools and of the trained intelligence they give our children the oppor- tunity to acquire. But what we care for most is the character of the average man; for we believe that if the average of character in the individual citizen is sufficiently 20 high, if he possesses those qualities which make him worthy of respect in his family life and in his work outside, as well as the qualities which fit him for success in the hard struggle of actual existence — that if such is the character of our individual citzenship, there is literally no height 25 of triumph unattainable in this vast experiment of gov- ernment by, of, and for a free people. CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES Governors of the Several States and Gentlemen: I welcome you to this conference at the White House. You have come hither at my request so that we may join together to consider the question of the conservation and use of the great fundamental sources of wealth of this 5 nation. So vital is this question that for the first time in our history the chief executive officers of the states sep- arately and of the states together forming the nation have met to consider it. With the Governors come men from each state chosen 10 for their special acquaintance with the terms of the prob- lem that is before us. Among them are experts in natural resources and representatives of national organizations concerned in the development and use of these resources; the Senators and Representatives in Congress; the Su- ispreme Court, the Cabinet and the Inland Waterways Commission have likewise been invited to the conference, which is therefore national in a peculiar sense. This conference on the conservation of natural re- sources is in effect a meeting of the representatives of all 20 the people of the United States called to consider the weightiest problem now before the nation, and the oc- casion for the meeting lies in the fact that the natural re- sources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer 25 to continue. With the rise of peoples from savagery to civilization, and with the consequent growth in the extent and variety of the needs of the average man, there comes a steadily 202 CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 203 increasing growth of the amount demanded by this average man from the actual resources of the country. Yet, rather curiously, at the same time the average man is likely to lose his realization of this dependence upon nature. Savages, and very primitive peoples generally, concern 5 themselves only with superficial natural resources; with those which they obtain from the actual surface of the ground. As peoples become a little less primitive their industries, although in a rude manner, are extended to resources below the surface; then, with what we call civil- lo ization and the extension of knowledge, more resources come into use, industries are multiplied and foresight begins to become a necessary and prominent factor in life. Crops are cultivated, animals are domesticated and metals are mastered. 15 Every step of the progress of mankind is marked by the discovery and use of natural resources previously unused. Without such progressive knowledge and utiliza- tion of natural resources population could not grow, nor industries multiply, nor the hidden wealth of the earth 20 be developed for the benefit of mankind. From the first beginnings of civilization, on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, the industrial progress of the world has gone on slowly, with occasional setbacks, but on the whole steadily, through tens of centuries to 25 the present day. But of late the rapidity of the progress has increased at such a rate that more space has been actually covered during the century and a quarter occupied by our national life than during the preceding six thousand years that take us back to the earliest monuments of 30 Egypt, to the earliest cities of the Babylonian plain. When the founders of this nation met at Independence 204 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS Hall in Philadelphia the conditions of commerce had not fundamentally changed from what they were when the Phoenician keels first furrowed the lonely waters of the Mediterranean. The differences were those of degree, 5 not of kind, and they were not in all cases even those of degree. Mining was carried on fundamentally as it had been carried on by the Pharaohs in the countries adjacent to the Red Sea. The wares of the merchants of Boston, of Charleston, 10 like the wares of the merchants of Nineveh and Sidon, if they went by water w^ere carried by boats propelled by sails or oars; if they went by land were carried in wagons drawn by beasts of draft or in packs on the backs of beasts of burden. The ships that crossed the high seas were bet- is ter than the ships that had once crossed the ^gean, but they were of the same type, after all — they were wooden ships propelled by sails; and on land the roads were not as good as the roads of the Roman Empire, while the serv- ice of the posts was probably inferior. 20 In Washington's time anthracite coal was known only as a useless black stone; and the great fields of bituminous coal were undiscovered. As steam was imknown, the use of coal for power production was undreamed of. Water was practically the only source of power, save the labor of 25 men and animals; and this power was used onl}^ in the most primitive fashion. But a few small iron deposits had been found in this country, and the use of iron by our countrymen was very small. Wood was practically the only fuel, and what lumber was sawed was consimied 30 locally, while the forests were regarded chiefly as obstruc- tions to settlement and cultivation. Such was the degree of progress to which civilized man- CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 205 kind had attained when this nation began its career. It is almost impossible for us in this day to reahze how little our Revolutionar}^ ancestors knew of the great store of natural resources whose discovery and use have been such vital factors in the groTvth and greatness of this nation, 5 and how little they required to take from this store in order to satisfy their needs. Since then our knowledge and use of the resources of the present territory of the United States have increased a hundredfold. Indeed, the growi:h of this nation by lo leaps and bounds makes one of the most striking and important chapters in the history of the world. Its groTvi^h has beeil due to the rapid development, and, alas! that it should be said, to the rapid destruction, of our natural resources. Nature has supplied to us in the United States, is and still supplies to us, more kinds of resources in a more lavish degree than has ever been the case at any other time or with any other people. Our position in the world has been attained by the extent and thoroughness of the con- trol we have achieved over Nature; but we are more, and 20 not less, dependent upon what she furnishes than at any previous time of history since the days of primitive man. Yet our fathers, though they knew so little of the re- sources of the country, exercised a wise forethought in reference thereto. Washington clearly saw that the per- 25 petuity of the states could only be secured by union and that the only feasible basis of union was an economic one; in other words, that it must be based on the development and use of their natural resources. Accordingly, he helped to outline a scheme of commercial development, and by 30 his influence an interstate waterways commission was ap- pointed by Virginia and Maryland. 206 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS It met near where we are now meeting, in Alexandria, adjourned to Mount Vernon, and took up the considera- tion of interstate commerce by the only means then avail- able, that of water. Further conferences were arranged, 5 first at Annapolis and then at Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that the representatives of all the states met for what was in its original conception merely a water^^ays conference; but when they had closed their deliberations the outcome was the Constitution which made the states 10 into a nation. The Constitution of the United States thtis grew in large part out of the necessity for united action in the wise use of one of our natural resources. The wise use of all of our natural resources, which are our national resources 15 as well, is the great material question of to-day. I have asked 3^ou to come together now because the enormous consumption of these resources, and the threat of immi- nent exhaustion of some of them, due to reckless and waste- ful use, once more call for common effort, common action. 20 Since the days when the Constitution was adopted, steam and electricity have revolutionized the industrial world. Nowhere has the revolution been so great as in our own country. The discovery and utilization of min- eral fuels and alloys have given us the lead over all other 25 nations in the production of steel. The discovery and utilization of coal and iron have given us our railways, and have led to such industrial development as has never before been seen. The vast wealth of lumber in our forests, the riches of our soils and mines, the discovery 30 of gold and mineral oils, combined with the efficiency of our transportation, have made the conditions of our life unparalleled in comfort and convenience. CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 207 The steadily increasing drain on these natural re- sources has promoted to an extraordinary degree the complexity of our industrial and social life. Moreover, this unexampled development has had a determining effect upon the character and opinions of our people. The 5 demand for efficiency in the great task has given us vigor, effectiveness, decision and power, and a capacity for achievement which in its own lines has never -yet been matched. So great and so rapid has been our material growth that there has been a tendency to lag behind in 10 spiritual and moral growth; but that is not the subject upon which I speak to you to-day. Disregarding for the moment the question of moral pur- pose, it is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with 15 which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuit}^ Finally, it is ominousl}^ evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion. This nation began with the belief that its landed posses- 20 sions were illimitable and capable of supporting all the people who might care to make our country their home; but already the hmit of unsettled land is in sight, and indeed but little land fitted for agriculture now remains unoccupied save what can be reclaimed by irrigation and 25 drainage. We began w^th an unapproached heritage of forests; more than half of the timber is gone. We began with coal fields more extensive than those of any other nation and with iron ores regarded as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that the end of both iron and30 coal is in sight. The mere increase in our consumption of coal during 208 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS 1907 over 1906 exceeded the total consumption in 1876, the centennial year. The enormous stores of mineral oil and gas are largely gone. Our natural waterways are not gone, but they have been so injured by neglect and by 5 the division of responsibility and utter lack of system in dealing with them that there is less navigation on them now than there was fifty years ago. Finally, we began with soils of unexampled fertility and we have so im- poverished them by injudicious use and by failing to check 10 erosion that their crop-producing power is diminishing instead of increasing. In a word, we have thoughtlessly, and to a large degree unnecessarily, diminished the resources upon which not only our prosperity but the prosperity of our children must always depend. 15 We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted, when the soils 20 shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation. These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same 25 reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and wisely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children. The natural resources I have enumerated can be divided 30 into two sharply distinguished classes accordingly as they are or are not capable of renewal. Mines if used must necessarily be exliausted. The minerals do not CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 209 and can not renew themselves. Therefore, in deahng with the coal, the oil, the gas, the iron, the metals generally, all that we can do is to try to see that they are wisely used. The exhaustion is certain to come in time. The second class of resources consists of those which s can not only be used in such manner as to leave them un- diminished for our cliildren, but can actually be improved by wise use. The soil, the forests, the waterways, come in this category. In dealing mth mineral resources, man is able to improve on nature only by putting the re- lo sources to a beneficial use, which in the end exhausts them; but in dealing with the soil and its products man can improve on nature by compelling the resources to renew and even reconstruct themselves in such manner as to serve increasingly beneficial uses — while the living is waters can be so controlled as to multiply their benefits. Neither the primitive man nor the pioneer was aware of any duty to posterity in dealing with the renewable resources. When the American settler felled the forests he felt that there was plenty of forest left for the sons 20 who came after him. When he exhausted the soil of his farm he felt that his son could go W^est and take up an- other. So it was with his immediate successors. Wlien the soil washed from the farmer's fields choked the neigh- boring river he thought only of using the railway rather 25 than boats for moving his produce and supplies. Now all this is changed. On the average the son of the farmer of to-day must make his living on his father's farm. There is no difficulty in doing this if the father will exercise wisdom. No wise use of a farm exhausts 30 its fertility. So with the forests. We are on the verge of a timber famine in this country, and it is unpardonable 210 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS for the nation or the states to permit any further cutting of our timber save in accordance with a sj^stem which mil provide that the next generation shall see the timber increased instead of diminished. Moreover, we can add 5 enormous tracts of the most valuable possible agricul- tm'al land to the national domain by irrigation in* the arid and semi-arid regions, and by drainage of great tracts of swamp land in the humid regions. We can enormously increase our transportation facilities by the canalization 10 of our rivers so as to complete a great system of water- ways on the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts and in the Mississippi Valley, from the Great Plains to the AUe- ghenies and from the northern lakes to the mouth of the mighty Father of Waters. But all these various uses of 15 our natural resources are so closely connected that they should be co-ordinated, and should be treated as part of one coherent plan and not in haphazard and piecemeal fashion. It is largely because of this that I appointed the Water- 20 waj^s Commission last year, and that I have sought to perpetuate its work. I wish to take this opportunity to express in heartiest fashion my acknowledgment to all the members of the commission. At great personal sac- rifice of time and effort they have rendered a ser\dce to 25 the public for which we cannot be too grateful. Especial credit is due to the initiative, the energ}^, the devotion to duty and the far-sightedness of Gifford Pinchot,° to whom we owe so much of the progress we have already made in handling this matter of the co-ordination and 30 conservation of natural resources. If it had not been for him this convention neither would nor could have been called. CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 211 We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the nation to guard its own future in the essential mat- ter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. The time has come 5 for a change. As a people we have the right and the duty, second to none other but the right and duty of obeying the moral law, of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful develop- ment of our natural resources, whether that waste is caused lo by the actual destruction of such resources or by maldng them impossible of development hereafter. Any right-thinking father earnestly desires and strives to leave his son both an untarnished name and a reason- able equipment for the struggle of life. So this nation i5 as a whole should earnestly desire and strive to leave to the next generation the national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted. There are signs that both the nation and the states are waking to a realization of this great truth. On March 10, 1908, the Supreme Court 20 of Maine rendered an exceedingly important judicial de- cision. This opinion was rendered in response to questions as to the right of the Legislature to restrict the cutting of trees on private land for the prevention of drouths and floods, the preservation of the natural water supply 25 and the prevention of the erosion of such lands and the consequent filling up of rivers, ponds and lakes. The forests and water power of Maine constitute the larger part of her wealth and form the basis of her industrial life, and the question submitted by the Maine Senate 30 to the Supreme Court and the answer of the Supreme Court alike bear testimony to the wisdom of the people 212 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS of Maine and clearly define a policy of conservation of natural resources the adoption of which is of vital im- portance not merely to Maine but to the whole country. Such a policy will preserve soil, forests, water power 5 as a heritage for the children and the children's children of the men and women of this generation; for any enact- ment that provides for the wise utilization of the forests, whether in public or private ownership, and for the con- servation of the water resources of the country must nec- loessarily be legislation that will promote both private and public welfare; for flood prevention, water power de- velopment, preservation of the soil and improvement of navigable rivers are all promoted by such a policy of forest conservation. 15 The opinion of the Maine Supreme bench sets forth unequivocally the principle that the property rights of the individual are subordinate to the rights of the com- munity, and especially that the waste of \\dld timber land derived originally from the state, involving as it would 20 the impoverishment of the state and its people and thereby defeating one great purpose of government, may properly be prevented by state restrictions. The court says that there are two reasons why the right of the public to control and limit the use of private prop- 25erty is peculiarly applicable to property in land: ^^ First, such property is not the result of productive labor, -but is derived solely from the state itself, the original owner; second, the amount of land being incapable of increase, if the owners of large tracts can waste them at will with- 30 out state restrictions, the state and its people may be helplessly impoverished and one great purpose of gov- ernment defeated. . . . We do not think the proposed CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES 213 legislation would operate to ' take ^ private property within the inhibition of the Constitution. While it might re- strict the owner of wild and uncultivated lands in his use of them, might delay his taking some of the product, might delay his anticipated profits and even thereby 5 might cause him some loss of profit, it would neverthe- less leave him his lands, their product and increase, un- touched, and without diminution of title, estate or quantity. He would still have large measures of control and large opportunity to realize values. He might suffer lo delay — but not deprivation. . . . The proposed legis- lation . . . would be within the legislature power and would not operate as a taking of private property for which compensation must be made.'' The Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey has 15 adopted a similar view, which has recently been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States. In deliver- ing the opinion of the court on April 6, 1908, Mr. Justice Holmes said: ^^The state as quasi-sovereign and repre- sentative of the interests of the public has a standing 20 in court to protect the atmosphere, the water and the forests within its territory, irrespective of the assent or dissent of the private owmers of the land most immediately concerned. ... It appears to us that few public in- terests are more obvious, indisputable and independent 25 of particular theory than the interest of the public of a state to maintain the rivers that are wholly Avithiij it substantially undiminished, except by such drafts upon them as the guardian of the public welfare may permit for the purpose of turning them to a more perfect use. 30 This public interest is omnipresent wherever there is a state, and grows more pressing as population grows. . . , 214 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS We are of opinion, further, that the constitutional power of the state to insist that its natural advantages shall remain unimpaired by its citizens is not dependent upon any nice estimate of the extent of present use or specula- 5 tion as to future needs. The legal conception of the neces- sary is likely to be confined to somewhat rudimentary wants, and there are benefits from a great river that might escape a la^vyer's view. But the state is not required to submit even to an aesthetic analysis. Any analysis may 10 be inadequate. It finds itself in possession of what all admit to be a great public good, and what it has it may keep and give no one a reason for its will. '^ These decisions reach the root of the idea of conservation of our resources in the interests of our people. 15 Finally, let us remember that the conservation of our natural resources, though the gravest problem of to-day, is yet but part of another and greater problem to which this nation is not yet awake, but to which it will awake in time, and with which it must hereafter grapple if it is 20 to live — the problem of national efficiency, the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. When the people of the United States consciously under- take to raise themselves as citizens, and the nation and the states in their several spheres, to the highest pitch 25 of excellence in private, state and national life, and to do this because it is the first of all the duties of true pa- triotism, then and not till then the future of this nation in quality and in time will be assured. DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Be- fore his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war- like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through 5 the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also. the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from the dark lo thraldom of the Middle Ages. This was the most famous university^ of medieval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a new world to discover. Its services to the cause of human knowl- edge already stretched far back into the remote past at 15 the time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse band of traders, ploughmen, wood- choppers and fisherfollc who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted land, were lay- ing the foundations of what has now become the giant 20 republic of the West. To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which once were theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren 25 who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled in the immemorial infancy of our race. The primeval conditions must be met by pri- 215 216 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS meval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward toward civiliza- tion. In conditions so primitive there can be but a prim- 5itive cultm*e. At first onl}^ the rudest schools can be established, for no others would meet the needs of the hard-driven^ sinewy folk wlio thrust forward the frontier in the teeth of savage man and savage nature; and many years elapse before any of these schools can develop into 10 seats of higher learning and broader culture. The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stock- aded clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and 15 tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the \\ilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming ci\dIization, themselves vanish before the civi- lization for which they have prepared the way. The chil- dren of their successors and supplanters, and then their 20 children and children's children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its 25 duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To* the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard ma- terialism of an industrialism even more intense and ab- sorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a 30 complex and predominantly industrial civilization. As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 217 of the mind and the spirit which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clearsightedly, 5 that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is round about in the New lo World; but it can be developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this where I speak to-day. It is a mis- take for any nation merely to copy another; but it is an is 'even greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from another and will- ing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of the Gam- 20 aheP of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar. To-day I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, 25 my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as each of ours — an effort to realize in its full sense government by, of and for the people — represents the most gigantic of all possible social 30 experiments, the one fraught with greatest possibilities alike for good and for evil. The success of republics like 218 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or of 5 a very few men, the quality of the rulers is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nation may for generations lead a brilliant career and add substantially to the simi of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of the aver- 10 age citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negh- gible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and vnih us the case is different. With j^ou here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, 15 success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her dut}^, first in the ordinary, everv^-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for the heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good 20 citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; ard the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the aA^erage citizenship of the nation. There- fore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard 25 of the average citizen is kept high ; and the average can- not be kept high unless the standard of the leadeis is very much higher. It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any re- public, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn 30 from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provideed that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 219 ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for the enjojrment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To 5 you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect and men of inherited wealth and position, should especially guard themselves, lo because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to their — your — chances of useful service are at an end. Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to is himself and to others as the cynic, as the man who has outgro^vn emotions and behefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face hfe is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who 2a confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an atti- tude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and2S lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fail, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an in- tellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with 30 life's realities — all these are marks, not, as ih^ possessor would fain think, of superiority, but of weakness. They 220 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS mark the men unfit to bear their part manfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of com- tempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is 5 easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs 10 to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives val- iantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, be- cause there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows 15 the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends . himself in a worth}^ cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails Avhile daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid 20 souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world! Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field 25 of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life, who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, 30 if only the conditions of life were not what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 221 fop or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emo- tion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusi- asm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not 5 so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ven- tured, and have put forth all their heart and strength' It is warworn Hotspur,° spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord lo who ^^but for the vile guns would have been a soldier. ^^ France has taught many lessons to other nations; surely one of the most important is the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership in arms and state- is craft. The brilliant gallantry of the French soldier has for many centuries been proverbial, and during these same centuries at every court in Europe the ^^ freemasons of fashion'^ have treated the French tongue as their com- mon speech; while every artist and man of letters, and 20 every man of science able to appreciate that marvel- ous instrument of precision, French prose, has turned toward France for aid and inspiration. How long the leadership in arms and letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the fact that the earhest masterpiece in a 25 modern tongue is the splendid French epic ° which tells of Roland's doom and the vengeance of Charlemagne when the lords of the Frankish host were stricken at Ronces- valles. Let those who have keep, let those who have not strive 30 to attain a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let us remember that these stand second to certain 222 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS other things. There is need of a sound body; and even more need of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character — the sum of those quahties which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of 5 his good faith and sense of honor. I beheve in exercise for the body, ahvays provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I be- lieve, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the education must contain much besides book learn- loing in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no pohsh, no. cleverness, in any way makes up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and 15 yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution — these are the qualities which mark a master- ful people. Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside. I speak to a brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great univer- 20sity which represents the flower of the highest intellect- ual development; I pay all homage to intellect, and to elaborate and specialized training of the intellect; and yet I know I shall have the assent of all you present when I add that more important still are the commonplace, 25 everyday qualities and virtues. Such ordinary, everyday qualities include the will and the power to work, to fight at need and to have plenty of healthy children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. 30 There are a few persons in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 223 for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of indifference. But the average man must earn his own 5 livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so — that he is not an object of en\y if he is idle, at whichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an object of derision. lo In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to ser\"e his country as a soldier should the need arise. There are well meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of Avar. They are i5 right only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unright- eousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this whether the alter- 20 native be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be. Is the right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be ^^ Yes,^^ 25 whatever the cost. Every honorable effort should always be made to avoid war, just as everj^ honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life to keep out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can 30 or ought to submit to wrong. Finally, even more important than ability to work, even 224 ROOSEVELT, S WRITINGS more important than ability to fight at need, is it to re- member that the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in Bibhcal times and it is the crown of bless- 5 ings now. The greatest of all curses is the curse of steril- ity, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon wilful sterility. The first essential in any civilization is that the man and the woman shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall in- 10 crease and not decrease. If this is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to deliberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those cnmes of ease and self-indulgence,* of shrinking from pain 15 and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature pun- ishes more heavily than any other. If we of the great repubhcs, if we, the free people who claim to have emanci- pated ourselves from the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the 20^\dlfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no ma- terial progress, no sordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way com- 25pensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues, and of these great fundamental virtues the greatest is the race's power to perpetuate the race. Character must show itself in the man's performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes 30 the state. The man's foremost duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well- DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 225 being; it is only after this has been done that he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he can help in movements for the general well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this can his sur- 5 plus strength be of use to the general public. It is not good to excite that bitter laughter which expresses con- tempt, and contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do great things for ic humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children. Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material well-being for the in- 15 dividual, as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, though indis- pensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the super- structure of a higher life. 20 That is why I decline to recognize the mere multi- millionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country, and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him of real benefit, of real use — and such is 25 often the case — why, then he does become an asset of worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used and not the mere fact of wealth that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelli-so gences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should 226 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then ad- 5 miration will come only from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved the question of increasing ,it becomes of constantly less importance compared to other things that can be done in life. 'It is a 10 bad tiling for a nation to raise and to admire a false stand- ard of success and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. The man who for any cause for which he is him- self accountable has failed to support himself and those 15 for whom he is responsible ought to feel that he has fallen lamentably short in his prime duty. But the man who, having far surpassed the limit of providing for the wants, both of bod}^ and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisi- 20tion or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being a desirable he is an unworthy citizen of the community, that he is to be neither admired nor envied, that his right thinking fellow countr^onen put 25 him low in the scale of citizenship and leave him to be con- soled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his owti. My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In ever}^ civilized society property 30 rights must be carefully safeguarded. Ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally, and in the long run, identi- DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 227 cal; but when it clearly appears that there is a real con- flict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property. In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to un- 3 derstand that there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judged admirable or the re- verse solely from the standpoint of the use made of them. Foremost among these I should include two very distinct lo gifts — the gift of money making and the gift of oratory. Money making, the money touch, I have spoken of above. It is a quality which in a moderate degree is essential. It may be useful when developed to a very great degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by other qual- 15 ities; and without such control the possessor tends to de- velop into one of the least attractive types produced by a modem industrial democracy. So it is with the orator. It is highly desirable that a leader of opinion in a democ- racy should be able to state his views clearly and con- 20 vincingly. But all that the oratory can do of value to the community is to enable the man thus to explain himself; if it enables the orator to persuade his hearers to put false values on things it merely makes him a power for mischief. Some excellent public servants have not the gift at all, 25 and must rely upon their deeds to speak for them; and unless the oratory does represent genuine conviction, based on good common sense and able to be translated into efficient performance, then the better the oratory the greater the damage to the pubhc it deceives. Indeed, 30 it is a sign of rharked political weakness in any common- wealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere 228 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase maker, the phrase monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not 5 make for courage, sobriety and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the republic. 10 Of course, all that I can say of the orator applies with even greater force to the orator's latter-day and more influential brother, the journalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it is used 15 aright. He can do, and he often does, great good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. All journaHsts, all writers, for the very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offences against 20 taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citi- zen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for de- bauching the community through a newspaper. Mendac- ity, slander, sensationalism, inanit}^, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debaucher}^ of the public mind 25 and conscience. The excuse advanced for vicious WTit- ing, that the public demands it and that the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were ad- vanced by the purveyors of food who sell poisonous adul- terations. 30 In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that he ought to possess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails without the other. He must have those qualities DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 229 which make for efficiency; and he must also have those qualities which direct the efficiency into channels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient. There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all that can be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is 5 dependent upon a sluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place in active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wicked- ness is likewise rendered immune from the robust er virtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to lo hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard. He is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient citizen. But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by is a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, in- tellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are used merely for that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of 20 others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes, regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes no 25 difference whether such a man's force and ability betray themselves in the career of money maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and 30 farseeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so 230 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inabiUty to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admi- 5 ration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty. The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good house- wife and house mother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand 10 at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be added thereto if a state is to be not only free, but great. Good citizenship is not good citizenship if exhibited only in the home. There remain the duties of the indi- \ddual in relation to the state, and these duties are none too 15 easy under the conditions which exist where the effort is made to carry on free government in a complex indus- trial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to remember in political life is that he must 20 not be a sheer doctrinaire. The closest philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob leader, and the insincere 25 man who to achieve power promises what by no possibil- ity can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious. The citizen must have high ideals, and jQi he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown 30 fantastic and have become impossible and indeed un- desirable to realize. The impracticable visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embit- DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN • 231 tered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stum- bhngs and shortcomings, yet does in some shape, in prac- tical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase- maker, to the empty ideahst, who, instead of makings ready the ground for the man of action, tm-ns against him when he appears and hampers him as he does the work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not lo himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called ^'practical" men whose is practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and de- cenc3^, in disregard of high standards of living and con- duct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal 20 opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the impossible better forever the enemy of the pos- sible good. We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme indi\ddualism as the doctrinaires of an ex- 25 treme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should re- member that, as society develops and grows more com- plex, we continuall}^ find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under the 30 changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort. It is quite impossible, and equally unde- 232- ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS sirable, to draw in theory a hard and fast hne which shall always divide the two sets of cases. Thus every one who is not cursed with the pride of the closet philosopher will see, if he will only take the trouble to think about some of 5 our commonest phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its owm drainage and water supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given area produces new problems which, because they differ in 10 size, are found to differ not onl}^ in degree but in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizmg to decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by prac- 15 tical experiment. Much of the cUscussion about socialism and indi\ddualism is entirely pointless, because of failm-e to agree on terminology. It is not good to be the slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance and con\dction; but it is a mere matter of 20 common sense to recognize that the state, the commun- ity, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if the^^ were left to individual action. The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of 25 ci\ilization, and we of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft in- stead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equal- 3oity of opportunity, to turn the tool user more and more into the tool o^vner, to shift burdens so that they can be more equitably borne. The deadening effect on any race DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 233 of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler im.- morality, than any existing system. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage adopt certain 5 of the principles professed by some given set of men who happen to call themselves socialists; to be afraid to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part. But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are lo equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equalit}^, at least to the extent of preventing the inequal- ity which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln,^ a is man of the plain people, blood of their blood and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suf- fered for them, and at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his 20 usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance): "I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but that they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not 25 mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This 30 they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all v/ere then actually 234 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS enjo5ang that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be fa- mihar to all — constantly looked to, constantly' labored for, 5 and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly ap- proximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deep- ening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.'' We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men 10 who would make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means injustice; the inequality of right, of opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far as is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the 15 ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equality of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality 20 of reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artist, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other course is to create a 25 new kind of privilege, the privilege of folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever form it takes. To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the in- capable ought to have the reward given to those who are farsighted, capable and upright is to say what is not true 30 and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us be- ware of the evil of leveling down. If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 235 needs a helping hand now and then. But if a man hes down, it is a waste of time to try to carry him; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and to those who do it. s Let us then take into account the actual facts of life, and not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, for recreating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hard-headed examination. On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposal merely be- lo cause it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its merits and in considering it disregard formulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it or why. If it seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There are plenty of is men calling themselves sociahsts with whom up to a cer- tain point it is quite possible to work. If the next step is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step may differ. But, on the other hand, keep clearly 20 in mind that, though it has been worth while to take one step, this does not in the least mean that it may be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd extremes as it would be to is go to these absurd extremes simply because some of the • measures advocated by the extremists were wise. The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and, as a matter of pride, he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the 30 best test of true love of liberty in an}^ country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only 236 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbors. Persecution is bad because it is 5 persecution, and without reference to which side happens at the moment to be the persecutor and which the perse- cuted. Class hatred is bad in just the same way, and without any regard to the indi\ddual who at a given time substitutes loyalty to a class for loyalty to the nation or 10 substitutes hatred of men because they happen to come in a certain social category for judgment awarded them ac- cording to their conduct. Remember always that the same measure of condemnation should be extended to the arrogance which would look down upon or crush any man 15 because he is poor and to the envy and hatred which would destroy a man because he is wealthy. The over-bearing brutality of the man of wealth or power and the envious and hateful malice directed against wealth or power are really at root merely different manifestations of the same 20 quality, merely the two sides of the same shield. The man who, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his less fortunate brethren is at heart the same as the greedy and violent demagog who excites those who have not property to plunder those who have. The 25 gravest \\Tong upon his country is inflicted by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his countryTiien divide primarily on the line that separates class from class, occupation from occupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead of remembering that the only 30 safe standard is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or poor, without regard to his profession or to his station in life. Such is the only DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 237 true democratic test, the only test that can with pro- priety be apphed in a republic. There have been many republics in the past, both in what we call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and the prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties 5 tended to di\dde along the line that separates wealth from poverty. It made no difference which side was successful, it made no difference whether the republic fell under the rule of an oligarchy or the rule of a mob. In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been sub- lo stituted for loyalty to the republic the end of the republic was at hand. There is no greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage be- tween right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, 15 the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position. In a republic to be successful we must learn to combine 20 intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if con- science and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine 25 hatreds, based on such differences, are signs not of earnest- ness of belief but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downifall of so many, 30 many nations. Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens 238 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, 5 profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to rehgious or anti-religious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his o^vn interest. The 10 very last thing that an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to regard any public man because that public man says he will get the private citizen something to which this private citi- zen is not entitled, or will gratif}^ some emotion or animos- isity which this private citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this by one anecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I was engaged in cattle ranching on the great plains of the western United States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free, the owner- 20 ship of each being determined by the brand; the calves were branded with the brand of the cows they followed. If on the round-up an animal was passed by, the follow- ing year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick. By the custom of the coun- 25 try these mavericks were branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy and we came upon a maverick. We roped and threw it, then we built a little fire, took out a cinch ring, heated it at the fire and 30 the cowboy started to put on the brand. I said to him: ^'It is So-and-so's brand,'' naming the man on whose range we happened to be. He answered: ^'That's all DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 239 right, boss; I know my business/^ In another moment I said to him: '^Hold on; you are putting on my brand!'' To which he answered: ^^ That's all right; I always put on the boss's brand." I answered: ^^ Oh, very well. Now, you go straight back to the ranch and get what is owing 5 to you; I don't need you an^^ longer." He jumped up and said: '^Why, what's the matter? I was putting on your brand." And I answered: ^^Yes, my friend, and if you will steal for me you will steal from me," Now, the same principle which applies in private life 10 applies also in public life. If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something WTong against your interest. 15 So much for the citizenship of the individual in his relations to his famil}", to his neighbor, to the state. There remain duties of citizenship which the state, the aggrega- tion of all the individuals, owes in connection with other states, with other nations. Let me sa}^ at once that I am 20 no advocate of a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believe that a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the only possible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teaches us that the average man who protests that his international feeling swamps his national feeling, 25 that he does not care for his country because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does not care to be a citizen of any one country because he is a citizen of the world, is in very fact usually an exceedingly 30 undesirable citizen of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. In the dim future all 240 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS raoral needs and moral standards maj^ change; but at . present, if a man can view his own country and all other countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust him, just as it is wise to distrust the man 5 who can take the same dispassionate view of his wife and his mother. However broad and deep a man's sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have no fear that they will be cramped by love of his native land. Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should 10 not wish to do good outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I think that the man who loves his family is more apt to be a good neighbor than the man who does not, so I think that the most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strong patriotic nation. So far 15 from patriotism being inconsistent with proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of the national honor as a gentle- man of his own honor, will be careful to see that the na- tion neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as a gentle- 20 man scorns equally to \\Tong others or to suffer others to wrong him. I do not for one moment admit that political moralit}^ is different from private morality, that a promise made on the stump differs from a promise made in private life. I do not for one moment admit that a man should 25 act deceitfully as a pubhc servant in his deahngs with other nations, any more than that he should act deceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with other private citi- zens. I do not for one moment admit that a nation should treat other nations in a different spirit from that in which 30 an honorable man would treat other men. In practically applying this principle to the two sets of cases there is, of course, a great practical difference to DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN 241 be taken into account. We speak of international law; but international law is something wholly different from private or municipal law, and the capital difference is that there is a sanction for the one and no sanction for the other; that there is an outside force which compels in- 5 dividuals to obey the one, while there is no such outside force to compel obedience as regards the other. Inter- national law will, I believe, as the generations pass, grow stronger and stronger until in some way or other there develops the power to make it respected. But as yet 10 it is only in the first formative period. As yet, as a rule, each nation is of necessity obliged to judge for itself in matters of vital importance between it and its neighbors and actions must of necessity, where this is the case, be different from what they are where, as among private 15 citizens, there is an outside force whose action is all-power- ful and must be invoked in any crisis of importance. It is the duty of wise statesmen, gifted with the power of looking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every movement which will substitute or tend to substitute some 20 other agency for force in the settlement of international disputes. It is the duty of every honest statesman to try to guide the nation so that it shall not wrong any other nation. But as yet the great civilized peoples, if they are to be true to themselves and to the cause of humanity and 25 civilization, must keep ever in mind that in the last resort they must possess both the will and the power to resent wrongdoing from others. The men who sanely believe in a lofty morality preach righteousness; but they do not preach weakness, whether among private citizens or among 30 nations. We believe that our ideals should be high, but not so high as to make it impossible measurably to realize 242 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS them. We sincerely and earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, we scorn the man who would not stand for justice, though the whole world came in arms against him. 5 And now, my hosts, a word in parting. You and I belong to the only two republics among the great Powers of the world. The ancient friendship between France and the United States has been, on the whole, a sincere and disinterested friendship. A calamity to you would 10 be a sorrow to us. But it would be more than that. In the seething turmoil of the history of humanity certain nations stand out as possessing a peculiar power or charm, some special gift of beauty or wisdom or strength, which puts them among the immortals, which makes them rank 15 forever with the leaders of mankind. France is one of these nations. For her to sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of 2oMalbrook,° it was to tell how the soul of this warrior foe took flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago Froissart, writing of a time of dire disaster, said that Ihe realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men who would valiantly fight 25 for it. You have had a great past. I believe that you will have a -great future. Long may you carry your- selves proudly as citizens of a nation which bears a lead- ing part in the teaching and uplifting of mankind! LAST WORDS ON AMERICANISM I CANNOT be with you, and so all I can do is to wish you Godspeed. 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 American people have as short memory, and that they intend to revive all the for- eign associations which most directly interfere, with the complete Americanization of our people. Our principle in this matter should be absolutely simple. In the first place we should insist that if the im- lo migrant who comes here does in good faith become, 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 birthplace, or origin. is But this is predicted upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing 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. 20 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, wliich sym- bolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as2S 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 English language, for we intend to see that the crucible 243 244 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS turns our people out as Americans, of American nation- ality, 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. NATURAL mSTORY MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST ^ I AM asked to give an account of my interest in natural history, and my experience as an amateur naturalist. The former has always been very real; and the latter, un- fortunately, very limited. I don^t suppose that most men can tell why their minds 5 are attracted to certain studies any more than why their tastes are attracted by certain fruits. Certainly, I can no more explain why I like ^^ natural history^' than why I like California canned peaches; nor why I do not care for that enormous brand of natural history which deals lo with invertebrates any more than why I do not care for brandied peaches. All I can say is that almost as soon as I began to read at all I began to Hke to read about the natural history of beasts and birds and the more formid- able or interesting reptiles and fishes. 15 The fact that I speak of ^^ natural history'^ instead of ''biology,'^ and use the former expression in a restricted sense, will show that I am a belated member of the gen- eration that regarded Audubon^ with veneration, that accepted Waterton° — Audubon^s violent critic — as the 20 ideal of the wandering naturalist, and that looked upon Brehm^ as a delightful but rather awesomely erudite example of advanced scientific thought. In the broader field, thank Heaven, I sat at the feet of Darwin° and Huxley,° and studied the large volumes in which Marsh^s° 25 and Leidy's° palseontological studies were embalmed, with a devotion that was usually attended by a dreary lack 1 Reprinted by permission from the American Museum Journal, vol. xviii, p. 321 (May, 1918.) 247 248 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS of reward — what would I not have given fifty years ago for a writer Hke Henry Fairfield Osborn,° for some scien- tist who realized that intelligent laymen need a guide capable of building before their eyes the life that was, in- 5 stead of merely cataloguing the fragments of the death that is. I was a very nearsighted small boy, and did not even know that my eyes were not normal until I was fourteen; and so my field studies up to that period were even more 10 worthless than those of the average boy who '^ collects'' natural history specimens much as he collects stamps. I studied books industriously but nature only so far as could be compassed by a molelike vision; my triumphs con- sisted in such things as bringing home and raising — by the 15 aid of milk and a syringe — a family of very young gray squirrels, in fruitlessly endeavoring to tame an excessively unamiable woodchuck, and in making friends with a gentle, pretty, trustful white-footed mouse which reared her family in an empty flower pot. In order to attract 20 my attention birds had to be as conspicuous as bobolinks or else had to perform feats such as I remember the barn swallows of my neighborhood once performed, when they assembled for the migration alongside our house and be- cause of some freak of bewilderment swarmed in through 25 the windows and clung helplessly to the curtains, the furniture, and even to our clothes. Just before my fourteenth birthday my father — then a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History — started me on my rather mothlike career as a naturalist 30 by giving me a pair of spectacles, a French pin-fire double- barreled shotgun — and lessons in stuffing birds. The spectacles literally opened a new world lo me. The MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 249 mechanism of the pin-fire gun was without springs and therefore could not get out of order — an important point, as my mechanical ability was nil. The lessons in stuff- ing and mounting birds were given me by Mr. John G. Bell, a professional taxidermist and collector who had 5 accompanied Audubon on his trip to the *'Far West/^ Mr. Bell was a very interesting man, an American of the before-the-war type. He was tall, straight as an Indian, with white hair and smooth-shaven clear-cut face; a dignified figure, always in a black frock coat. He had lo no scientific knowledge of birds or mammals; his interest lay merely in collecting and preparing them. He taught me as much as my limitations would allow of the art of pre- paring specimens for scientific use and of mounting them. Some examples of my wooden methods of mounting birds 15 are now in the American Museum: three different species of Egyptian plover, a snoA\y owl, and a couple of spruce grouse mounted on a shield with a passenger pigeon — the three latter killed in Maine during my college vacations. With my spectacles, my pin-fire gun, and my clumsy 20 industry in skinning ^^ specimens,^' I passed the winter of 72-75 in Egypt and Palestine, being then fourteen years old. My collections showed nothing but enthusiasm on my part. I got no bird of any unusual scientific value. My observations were as valueless as my collections 25 save on just one small point; and this point is of interest only as showing, not my own power of observation, but the ability of good men to fail to observe or record the seemingly self-evident. On the Nile the only book dealing with Egyptian birds 30 which I had with me was one by an English clergyman, a Mr. Smith, who at the end of his second volume gave 250 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS a short list of the species he had shot, with some comments on their habits but without descriptions. On my way home through Europe I secured a good book of Egyp- tian ornithology by a Captain Shelley. Both books enu- smerated and commented on several species of chats — the Old World chats, of course, which have nothing in common with our queer warbler of the same name. Two of these chats were common along the edges of the desert. One species was a boldly pied black and white bird, the other 10 was colored above much like the desert sand, so that when it crouched it was hard to see. I found that the strikingly conspicuous chat never tried to hide, was very much on the alert, and was sure to attract attention when a long way oft; whereas the chat whose upper color harmonized 15 with its surroundings usually sought to escape observation by crouching motionless. These facts were obvious even to a dull-sighted, not particularly observant boy; they were essential features in the comparison between and in the study of the life histories of the two birds. Yet neither 20 of the two books in my possession so much as hinted at them. I think it was my observation of these, and a few sim- ilar facts, Avhich prevented my yielding to the craze that fifteen or twenty years ago became an obsession with 25 certain other^vise good men — the belief that all animals were protectively colored when in their natural surround- ings. That this simply wasn^t true was shown by a mo- ment's thought of these two chats; no rational man could doubt that one was revealingly and the other conceal- aoingly colored; and each was an example of what was true in thousands of other cases. Moreover, the incident showed the only, and very mild, merit which I ever de- MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 251 veloped as a "faunal naturalist.'^ I never grew to have keen powers of observation. But whatever I did see I saw truly, and I was fairly apt to understand what it meant. In other w^ords, I saw what was sufficiently obvious, and in such case did not usually misinterpret what I had seen. 5 Certainly this does not entitle me to any particular credit, but the outstanding thing is that it does entitle me to some, even although of a negative kind; for the great majority of observers seem quite unable to see, to record, or to un- derstand facts so obvious that they leap to the eye. My lo two ornithologists offered a case in point as regards the chats ; and I shall shortly speak of one or two other cases, as, for example, the cougar and the saddle-backed lechwi. After returning to this country and until I was halfway through college, I continued to observe and collect in the is fashion of the ordinary boy who is interested in natural history. I made copious and valueless notes. As I said above, I did not see and observe very keenly; later it in- terested and rather chagrined me to find out how much more C. Hart Merriam° and John Burroughs'^ saw when 20 I went out with them near Washington or in the Yellow- stone Park; or how much more George K. Cherrie° and Leo E. Miller° and Edmund Heller° and Edgar A. Mearns° and my own son Kermit saw in Africa and South Amer- ica, on the trips I took to the Nyanza lakes and across the 25 Brazilian hinterland. During the years when as a boy I ^^ collected specimens'' at Oyster Bay or in the north woods, my contributions to original research were of minimum worth — they were hm- ited to occasional records of such birds as the dominicaao warbler at Oyster Bay, or to seeing a duck hawk work havoc in a loose gang of night herons, or to noting the 252 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS bloodthirsty conduct of a captive mole shrew — I think I sent an account of the last incident to C. Hart Merriam. I occasionally sent to some small ornithological publica- tion a local list of Adirondack birds or something of the 5 sort; and then proudly kept reprinted copies of the list on my desk until they grew dog-eared and then disappeared. I lived in a region zoologically so well kno^Ti that the obvious facts had all been set forth already, and as I lacked the power to find out the things that were not obvious, my 10 work merely paralleled the similar work of hundreds of other young collectors who had a very good time but who made no particular addition to the sum of human knowledge. Among ni}^ boy friends who cared for ornithology was a fine and manly young fellow, Fred Osborn, the brother of 15 Henry Fairfield Osborn. He was drowned, in his g-allant youth, forty jeavs ago; but he comes as vividly before my eyes now as if he were still alive. One cold and snowj'' winter I spent a day with him at his father's house at Garrison-on- the-Hudson. Numerous northern birds, 20 which in our eyes were notable rarities, had come down with the hard weather, I spied a flock of crossbills in a pine, fired, and excitedly rushed forv/ard. A twig caught my spectacles and snapped them I knew not where. But dim though my vision was, I could still make out the red 25 birds lying on the snow; and to me they were treasures of such importance that I abandoned all thought of my glasses and began a nearsighted hunt for my quarry. By the time I had picked up the last crossbill I found that I had lost all trace of my glasses; my day's sport — or scien- 30tific endeavor, whatever you choose to call it — came to an abrupt end; and as a result of the lesson I never again in my life went out shooting, whether after sparrows or MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 253 elephants, without a spare pair of spectacles in my pocket. After some ranch experiences I had my spectacle cases made of steel; and it was one of these steel spectacle cases which saved my life in after years when a man shot into me in Milwaukee.® 5' While in Harvard I was among those who joined in form- ing the Nuttall Club, which I believe afterward became one of the parent sources of the American Ornithologists' Union, The Harvard of that day was passing through a phase of 10 biological study which was shaped by the belief that Ger- man university methods were the only ones worthy of copy, and also by the proper admiration for the younger Agassiz,° whose interest was mainly in the lower forms of marine hfe. Accordingly it was the accepted doctrine 15 that a biologist — the word ^^ naturalist was eschewed as archaic — was to work toward the ideal of becoming a section cutter of tissue, who spent his time studying this tissue, and low marine organisms, under the microscope. Such work was excellent; but it covered a very small part 20 of the biological field; and not only was there no encour- agement for the work of the field naturalist, the faunal naturalist, but this work was positively discouraged, and was treated as of negligible value. The effect of this atti- tude, common at that time to all our colleges, was detri-25 mental to one very important side of natural history re- search. The admirable work of the microscopist had no attraction for me, nor was I fitted for it ; I grew even more interested in other forms of work than in the work of a faunal naturalist; and I abandoned all thought of making 30 the study of my science my life interest. But I never lost a real interest in natural history; and 254 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS I very keenly regret that at certain times I did not dis- play this interest in more practical fashion. Thus, for the dozen years beginning with 1883, I spent much of my time on the Little Missouri, where big game was then 5 plentiful. Most big game hunters never learn anything about the game except how to kill it; and most natural- ists never observ^e it at all. Therefore a large amount of important and rather ob\dous facts remains unobserved or inaccurateb/ observed until the species becomes ex- 10 tinct. What is most needed is not the ability to see what very few people can see, but to see what almost anybody can see, but nobody takes the trouble to look at. But I vaguely supposed that the obvious facts were known; and I let most of the opportunities pass by. Even so, 15 many of my observations on the life histories of the big- horns, white goats, prongbucks, deer, and wapiti, and occasional observations on some of the other beasts, such as black-footed ferrets, were of value; indeed as regards some of the big game beasts, the accounts in^^ Hunting 20 Trips of a Ranchman/^ ^^ Ranch Life and the Hunting Trial," and " The Wilderness Hunter " gave a good deal of information which, as far as I know, is not to be found elsewhere. To illustrate what I mean as '^ obvious^' facts which 25 nevertheless are of real value I shall instance the cougar. In the winter of 1910 I made a cougar hunt with hounds, spending about five weeks in the mountains of northwest- ern Colorado. At that time the cougar had been seem- ingly well known to hunters, settlers, naturalists, and 30 novelists for more than a century; and yet it was actually impossible to get trustworthy testimony on such elemen- tary points as, for instance, whether the male and female MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 255 mated permanently, or at least until the young were reared (like foxes and wolves), and whether the animal caught its prey by rambling and stalking or, as was frequently asserted, by lying in wait on the branches of a tree. The facts I saw and observed during our five 5 weeks' hunt in the snow were obvious; they needed only the simplest powers of observation and of deduction from observation. But nobody had hitherto shown or exercised these simple powers! My narrative in the volume ^'Out- door Pastimes of an American Hunter " gave the first 10 reasonably full and trustworthy life history of the cougar as regards its most essential details — for Merriam's capi- tal Adirondack study had dealt with the species when it was too near the vanishing point and therefore when the conditions were too abnormal for some of these essential 15 details to be observed. In South America I made observations of a certain value on some of the strange creatures we met, and these are to be found in the volume '^Through the Brazilian Wilderness; '' but the trip was primarily one of explora-20 tion. In Africa, however, we really did some good work in natural history. Many of my observations were set forth in my book '^African Game Trails; '' and I have always felt that the book which Edmund Heller and I jointly wrote, the '' Life Histories of African Game Animals,'' was a serious 25 and worth-while contribution to science. Here again, this contribution, so far as I was concerned, consisted chiefly in seeing, recording, and interpreting facts which were really obvious, but to which observers hitherto had been bhnd, or which they had misinterpreted partly be- 30 cause sportsmen seemed incapable of seeing anything except as a trophy, partly because stay-at-home system- 256 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS atists never saw anything at all except skins and skulls which enabled them to give Latin names to new ''species^' or ^^ subspecies/^ partly because collectors had collected birds and beasts in precisel}^ the spirit in which other 5 collectors assembled postage stamps. I shall give a few instances. In mid-Africa we came across a peculiar bat, with a greenish body and slate blue wings. Specimens of this bat had often been col- lected. But I could find no record of its really interesting 10 habits. It was not nocturnal; it was hardly even crepus- cular. It hung from the twigs of trees during the day and its activities began rather early in the afternoon. It did not fly continuously in swallow fashion, according to the usual bat custom. It behaved like a phoebe or other fly- is catcher. It hung from a twig until it saw an insect, then swooped down, caught the insect, and at once returned to the same or another twig — just as a phoebe or peewee or kingbird returns to its perch after a similar flight. On the White Nile I hunted a kind of handsome river 20 antelope, the white-withered or saddle-backed lechwi. It had been known for fifty years to trophy-seeking sportsmen, and to closet naturalists, some of whom had called it a kob and others a water buck. Its nearest kinsman was in reality the ordinary lechwi, which dwelt 25 far off to the south, along the Zambezi. But during that half century no hunter or closet naturalist had grasped this obvious fact. I had never seen the Zambezi lechwi, but I had carefully read the account of its habits by Selous° — a real hunter-naturalist, faunal naturalist. As 30 soon as I came across the White Nile river bucks, and observed their habits, I said to my companions that they were undoubtedly lechwis: I wrote this to Selous,° and MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 257 to another English hunter-naturalist, Migand; and even a slight examination of the heads and skins when compared with those of the other lechwi and of the kobs and water bucks proved that I was right. A larger, but equally obvious group of facts was that s connected with concealing and revealing coloratioli. As eminent a naturalist as Wallace,^ and innumerable men of less note, had indulged in every conceivable vagary of speculative theory on the subject, largely based on supposed correlation between the habits and the shape lo or color patterns of big animals which, as a matter of fact, they had never seen in a state of nature. While in Africa I studied the question in the field, observing countless individuals of big beasts and birds, and comparing the results with what I had observed of the big game and the 15 birds of North America (the result being borne out by what I later observed in South America) . In a special chap- ter of the ^' Life Histories of African Game Animals,'' as well as in a special number of the ^'American Museum Bulletin,'^ I set forth the facts thus observed and the con- 20 elusions inevitably to be deduced from them. All that I thus set forth, and all the conclusions I deduced, belonged to the obvious; but that there was need of thus setting forth the obvious was sufficiently shown by the simple 25 fact that large numbers of persons refused to accept it even when set forth. I do not think there is much else for me to say about my anything but important work as a naturalist. But perhaps I may say further that while my interest in nat- ural history had added very little to my sum of achieve- 30 ment, it has added immeasurably to my sum of enjoyment in life. NATURE FAKERS In the Middle Ages there was no hard-and-fast line drawn between fact and fiction even in ordinary history; and until much later there was not even an effort to draw it in natural history. There are quaint little books on 5 beasts, in German and in English, as late as the six- teenth century, in which the unicorn° and the basilisk^ appear as real creatures; while to more commonplace animals there are ascribed traits and habits of such ex- ceeding marvelousness that they ought to make the souls 10 of the ^^ nature fakers^' of these degenerate days swell with envious admiration. As real outdoor naturalists, real observers of nature, grew up, men who went into the wilderness to find out the truth, they naturally felt a half-indignant and half- is amused contempt both for the men Avho invented pre- posterous fiction about "wild animals, and for the credulous stay-at-home people w^ho accepted such fiction as fact. A century and a half ago old Samuel Hearne,® the Hudson Bay explorer, a keen and trustAvorthy observer, while 20 writing of the beaver, spoke as follows of the spiritual predecessors of certain modern writers : "I cannot refrain from smiling w^hen I read the accounts of different authors wiio have ^vritten on the economy of these animals, as there seems to be a contest between them 25 who shall most exceed in fiction. But the compiler of the * Wonders of Nature and Art' seems, in my opinion, to have succeeded best in this respect; as he has not only collected all the fictions into which other writers on the subject have run, but has so greatly improved on them, 258 NATURE FAKERS 259 that little remains to be added to his account of the beaver besides a vocabulary of their language, a code of their laws, and a sketch of their religion, to make it the most complete natural history of that animal which can possibly be offered to the public. 5 "There cannot be a greater imposition, or indeed a grosser insult on common understanding, than the wish to make us believe the stories [in question] ... a very moderate share of understanding is surely sufficient to guard [any one] against giving credit to such marv^elous lo tales, however smoothly they may be told, or however boldly they may be asserted by the romancing traveler." Heame was himself a man who added greatly to the fund of knowledge about the beasts of the wilderness. We need such observers; much remains to be told about the is w^olf and the bear, the lynx and the fisher, the moose and the caribou. Undoubtedly wild creatures sometimes show very unexpected traits, and individuals among them some- times perform fairly startling feats or exhibit totally unlooked-for sides of their characters in their relations 20 with one another and \\dth man. We much need a full study and observation of all these animals, undertaken by observers capable of seeing, understanding, and record- ing what goes on in the wilderness; and such study and observation cannot be made by men of dull mind and 25 limited power of appreciation. The highest type of stu- dent of nature should be able to see keenly and writer inter- estingly and should have an imagination that will enable him to interpret the facts. But he is not a student of nature at all who sees not keenly but falsely, who writes 30 interestingly and untruthfully, and whose imagination is used not to interpret facts but to invent them. 2G0 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS We owe a real debt to the men who truthfully portray for us, with pen or pencil, any one of the many sides of outdoor life; whether they work as artists or as writers, whether they care for big beasts or small birds, for the 5 homely farmland or for the vast, lonely wilderness, whether they are scientists proper, or hunters of game, or lovers of all nature — which, indeed, scientists and hunters ought also to be. John Burroughs and John Muir, Stewart Edward White, and Frederic Remington, Ohve loThorne Miller,° Hart Merriam, William Hornaday, Frank Chapman, J. A. Allen, ° Ernest Ingersoll, Witmer Stone, William Cram, George Shiras — to all of these and to many like them whom I could name, we owe much, we who love the breath of the woods and the fields, and 15 who care for the wild creatures, large or small. And the surest way to neutralize the work of these lovers of truth and nature, of truth in nature-study, is to encourage those w^hose work shows neither knowledge of nature nor love of truth. 20 The modern ^^ nature faker ^' is of course an object of derision to every scientist worthy of the name, to every real lover of the wilderness, to every faunal naturalist, to every true hunter or nature lover. But it is evident that he completely deceives many good people who are 25 wholly ignorant of wild life. Sometimes he draws on his own imagination for his fictions; sometimes he gets them second-hand from irresponsible guides or trappers or Indians. In the wilderness, as elsewhere, there are some persons 30w"ho do not regard the truth; and these are the very persons who most delight to fill credulous strangers with impossible stories of wild beasts. As for Indians, they live NATURE FAKERa 261 in a world of mysticism, and they often ascribe super- natural traits to the animals they know, just as the men of the Middle Ages, with almost the same childlike faith, credited the marvels told of the unicorn, the basilisk, the roc,° and the cockatrice.^ .... 5 It would take a volume merely to catalogue the comic absurdities with which the books of these writers are filled. There is no need of discussing their theories; the point is that their alleged ^^ facts'^ are not facts at all, but fancies. Their most striking stories are not merely distortions of lo facts, but pure inventions; and not only are they inven- tions, but they are inventions by men who know so little of the subject concerning which they write, and who to igno- rance add such utter recklessness, that they are not even able to distinguish between what is possible, however 15 wildly improbable, and mechanical impossibilities. Be it remembered that I am not speaking of ordinary mistakes, of ordinary errors of observation, of differences of inter- pretation and opinion; I am dealing only with deliberate invention, deliberate perversion of fact. 20 Now all this would be, if not entirely proper, at least far less objectionable, if the writers in question were con- tent to appear in their proper garb, as is the case with the men who WTite fantastic fiction about wild animals for the Sunday issues of various daily newspapers. Moreover, 25 as a writer of spirited animal fables, avowed to be such, any man can gain a distinct place of some importance. But it is astonishing that such very self-evident fiction as that which I am now discussing should, when advertised as fact, impose upon any person of good sense, no matter 30 how ignorant of natural history and of wild life.* Most of us have enjoyed novels hke ^^King Solomon's Mines,'' ° 262 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS for instance. But if Mr. Rider Haggard^ had insisted that his novels were not novels but records of actual fact, we should feel a mild wonder at the worthy persons who accepted them as serious contributions to the study of 5 African geography and ethnology. It is not probable that the writers in question have even so much as seen some of the animals which they minutely describe. They certainly do not know the first thing about their habits, nor even about their physical structure. 10 Judging from the internal evidence of their books, I should gravely doubt if they had ever seen a wild wolf or a wild lynx. The wolves and lynxes and other animals which they describe are full brothers of the wild beasts that appear in ^' Uncle Remus ^^ ° and ^^ Reynard the 15 Fox,'^ ° and deserve the same serious consideration from the zoological standpoint. Certain of their wolves appear as gifted with all the philosophy, the self-restraint, and the keen intelligence of, say, Marcus Aurelius,° together with the lofty philanthropy of a modern altruist; though 20 unfortunately they are hampered by a wholly erroneous view of caribou anatomy. Like the White Queen° in ^^ Through the Looking- Glass, ^' these writers can easily believe three impossible things before breakfast; and they do not mind in the least 25 if the impossibilities are mutually contradictor^^ Tlius, one story relates how a wolf with one bite reaches the heart of a bull caribou, or a moose, or a horse — a feat which, of course, has been mechanically impossible of per- formance by any land carnivore since the death of the 30 last saber-toothed tiger. But the next story will cheer- fully describe a doubtful contest between the wolf and a lynx or a bulldog, in which the latter survives twenty NATURE FAKERS 263 slashing bites. Now of course a wolf that could bite into the heart of a horse would swallow a bulldog or a lynx like a pill. In one story, a wolf is portrayed as guiding home some lost children, in a spirit of thoughtful kindness; let the 5 overtrustful individual who has girded up his loins to be- lieve this think of the way he would receive the statement of some small farmer's boy that when lost he was guided home by a coon, a possum, or a woodchuck. Again, one of these story-book wolves, when starving, catches a red lo squirrel, which he takes round as a present to propitiate a bigger wolf. If any man seriously thinks a starving wolf would act in this manner, let him study hounds when feed- ing, even when they are not star^dng. The animals are alternately portrayed as actuated by is motives of exalted humanitarianism, and as possessed of demoniac prowess and insight into motive. In one story the fisher figures in the latter capacity. A fisher is a big marten, the size of a fox. This particular story-book fisher, when pursued by hunters on snow-shoes, kills a buck 20 by a bite in the throat, and leaves the carcass as a bribe to the hunters, hoping thereby to distract attention from himself! Now, foxes are continually hunted; they are far more clever than fishers. What rational man would pay heed to a story that a fox when hunted killed a good-sized 25 calf by a bite in the throat, and left it as a bribe to the hounds and hunters, to persuade them to leave him alone? One story is just as possible as the other. In another story, the salmon is the hero. The writer begins by blunders about the young salmon which a ten 30 minutes' visit to any government fish hatchery would have enabled him to avoid; and as a climax, describes how 264 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS the salmon goes up a fall by flopping from ledge to ledge of a cliff, under circumstances which make the feat about as probable as that the fish would use a stepladder. As soon as these writers get into the wilderness, they develop 5 preternatural powers of obsei^ation, and, as Mr. Shiras says, become themselves '^invisible and odorless,'^ so that the shyest wild creatures permit any closeness of intimacy on their part; in one recent story about a beaver colony, the alternative to the above proposition is that the beavers 10 were both blind and without sense of smell. Yet these same writers, who see such marvelous things as soon as they go into the woods, are incapable of ob- serving aright the most ordinary facts when at home. One of their stories relates how the eyes of frogs shine at night 15 in the wilderness; the author apparently ignoring the fact that frog-ponds are common in less remote places, and are not inhabited by blazing-eyed frogs. Two of our most common and most readil}^ observed small mammals are the red squirrel and the chipmunk. The chipmunk has 20 cheek pouches, in which he stores berries, grain, and small nuts, whereas the red squirrel has no cheek pouches, and carries nuts betw^een his teeth. Yet even this simple fact escapes the attention of one of the writers we are dis- cussing, who endows a red squirrel with cheek pouches 25 filled with nuts. Evidently excessive indulgence in inven- tion tends to atrophy the power of accurate observation. In one story a woodcock is described as making a kind of mud splint for its broken leg; it seems a pity not to have added that it also made itself a crutch to use while 30 the splint was on. A Baltimore oriole is described as mak- ing a contrivance of twigs and strings whereby to attach its nest, under circumstances which would imply the men- NATURE FAKERS 265 tal ability and physical address of a sailor making a ham- mock; and the story is backed up by affidavits, as are others of these stories. This particular feat is precisely as possible as that a Rocky Mountain pack rat can throw the diamond hitch. The affidavits in support of theses various stories are interesting only b>ecause of the curious light they throw on the personalities of those making and believing them. If the writers who make such startHng discoveries in the wilderness would really study even the denizens of a lo barnyard, they would be saved from at least some of their more sahent mistakes. Their stories dwell much on the 'teaching ^^ of the young animals by their elders and betters. In one story, for instance, a wild duck is de- scribed as ^ teaching'' her young how to swim and get 15 their food. If this writer had strolled into the nearest barnyard containing a hen which had hatched out duck- lings, a glance at the actions of those ducklings when the hen happened to lead them near a puddle would have en- lightened him as to how much ^Heaching^' they needed. 20 But these writers exercise the same florid imagination when they deal with a robin or a rabbit as when they de- scribe a bear, a moose, or a salmon. It is half amusing and half exasperating to think that there should be excellent persons to whom it is necessary 25 to explain that books stuffed with such stories, in which the stories are stated as facts, are preposterous in their worthlessness. These worthy persons vi\adly call to mind Professor Lounsbury's comment on ^'the infinite capacity of the human brain to withstand the introduction of 30 knowledge." The books in question contain no statement which a serious and truth-loving student of nature can 266 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS accept, save statements which have already long been known as established by trustworthy writers. The fables they contain bear the same relation to real natural history that Barnum^s^ famous artificial mermaid bore to real 5 fish and real mammals. No man who has really studied nature in a spirit of seeking the truth, whether he be big or little, can have any controversy with these writers; it would be as absurd as to expect some genuine student of anthropology or archeology to enter into a controversy 10 with the clumsy fabricators of the Cardiff Giant. ° Their books carry their own refutation; and affidavits in sup- port of the statements they contain are as worthless as the similar affidavits once solemnly issued to show that the Cardiff ^^gianf was a petrified pre- Adamite man. 15 There is now no more excuse for being deceived by their stories than for being still in doubt about the silly Car- diff hoax. Men of this stamp will necessarily arise, from time to time, some in one walk of life, some in another. Our 20 quarrel is not with these men, but with those who give them their chance. We who believe in the study of na- ture feel that a real knowledge and appreciation of wild things, of trees, flowers, birds, and of the grim and crafty creatures of the wilderness, give an added beauty and 25 health to life. Therefore we abhor deliberate or reckless untruth in this study as much as in any other; and there- fore we feel that a grave wrong is committed by all who, holding a position that entitles them to respect, yet con- done and encourage such untruth. THE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA With the exception of the bison, during the period of its plenty, the chief game animals followed by the Amer- ican rifle-bearing hunter have always been the different representatives of the deer family, and, out on the great plains, the pronghorn antelope. They were the games which Daniel Boone followed during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and David Crockett during the opening decades of the nineteenth; and now, at the outset of the twentieth century, it is probably not too much to say that ninety-nine out of every hundred head lo of game killed in the United States are deer, elk, or an- telope. Indeed, the proportion is very much larger. In certain restricted localities black bear were at one time very numerous, and over large regions the multitudinous herds of the bison formed until 1883 the chief objects of i5 pursuit. But the bison have now vanished; and though the black bear has held its own better than any other of the larger carnivora, it is only very locally that it has ever been plentiful in the sense that even now the elk, deer, and antelope are still plentiful over considerable 20 tracts of country. Taking the United States as a whole, the deer have always been by far the most numerous of all game; they have held their own in the land better than any other kinds; and they have been the most com- mon quarry of the hunter. 25 The nomenclature and exact specific relationships of American deer and antelope offer difficulties not only to the hunter but to the naturaUst. As regards the nomen- clature, we share the trouble encountered by all peoples 267 268 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS of European descent who have gone into strange lands. The incomers are ahnost invariably men who are not accustomed to scientific precision of expression. Like other people, they do not like to invent names if they Scan by any possibiUty make use of those already in existence, and so in a large number of cases they call the new birds, and animals by names applied to entirely different birds and animals of the Old World to which, in the eyes of the settlers, they bear some resemblance. 10 In South America the Spaniards, for instance, christened '^lion^' and ^Higer'' the great cats which are properly known as cougar and jaguar. In South Africa the Dutch settlers, who came from a land where all big game had long been exterminated, gave fairly grotesque names to 15 the great antelopes, calling them after the European elk, stag, and chamois. The French did but little better in Canada. Even in Ceylon the English, although be- longing for the most part to the educated classes, did no better than the ordinary pioneer settlers, miscalling 20 the sambur stag an elk, and the leopard a cheetah. Our own pioneers behaved in the same way. Hence it is that we have no distinctive name at all for the group of pe- culiarly American game birds of -which the bob-white is the typical representative; and that, when we could not 25 use the words quail, partridge, or pheasant, we went for our terminology to the barn-^^ard, and called our fine grouse, fool-hens, sage-hens, and prairie-chickens. The bear and wolf our people recognized at once. The bison they called a buffalo, which was no worse than the 30 way in which every one in Europe called the Old World bison an aurochs. The American true elk and reindeer were rechristened moose and caribou — excellent names,. THE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA 269 by the way, derived from the Indian. The huge stag was called an elk. The extraordinary antelope of the high Western peaks was christened the white goat; not un- naturally, as it has a most goatlike look. The prong- buck of the plains, an animal standing as much alone 5 among ruminants as does the giraffe, was simply called antelope. Even when we invented names for ourselves, we applied them loosely. The ordinary deer is sometimes known as the red deer, sometimes as the Virginia deer, and sometimes as the whitetail deer, — the last being lo by far the best and most distinctive term. In the present condition of zoological research it is not possible to state accurately how many ^^ species'^ of deer there are in North America, both because mammal- ogists have not at hand a sufficient amount of material 15 in the way of large series of specimens from different localities, and because they are not agreed among them- selves as to the value of '^species,'' or indeed as to exactly what is denoted by the term. Of course, if we had a complete series of specimens of extinct and fossil deer 20 before us, there would be an absolutely perfect inter- gradation among all the existing forms through their long-vanished ancestral types; for the existing gaps have been created by the extinction and transformation of these former types. Where the gap is very broad and 25 well marked no difficulty exists in using terms which shall express the difference. Thus the gap separating the moose, the caribou, and the wapiti from one another, and from the smaller American deer, is so wide, and there is so complete a lack of transitional forms, that 30 the differences among them are expressed by naturalists by the use of different generic terms. The gap between 270 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS the whitetail and the different forms of blacktail, though much less, is also clearly marked. But when we come to consider the blacktail among themselves, we find two very distinct types which yet show a certain tendency to 5 intergrade; and with the whitetail very wide differences exist, even in the United States, both individually among the deer of certain localities, and also as between all the deer of one locality when compared with all the deer of another. Our present knowledge of the various forms lohardl}^ justifies us in dogmatizing as to their exact relative worth, and even if our knowledge was more complete, naturahsts are as yet w^holly at variance as to the laws which should govern specific nomenclature. However, the hunter, the mere field naturalist, and the lover of 15 outdoor life, are only secondarily interested in the nice- ness of these distinctions, and it is for them that this volume is written. Accordingl}^, I shall make no effort to determine the number of different but closely allied forms of smaller deer which are found in North Temper- 20 ate America. Disregarding the minor differences, there are in North America in addition to the so-called antelope, six wholly distinct kinds of deer: the moose, caribou, wapiti, white- tail, and the two black tails. 25 The moose in its various forms reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the cold boreal forests of Canada, extending its range down into the United States in north- ern New England, Minnesota, and along the Rocky Mountains. It was exterminated from the Adirondacks 30 in the early sixties, about the time that the wapiti was exterminated in Pennsylvania, or very shortly before. It is the brother of the Old World elk, and its huge size, THE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA 271 shovel horns, short neck, swollen nose, and long legs dis- tinguish it at a glance from any other animal. The caribou is found throughout most of the moose^s range, but it does not extend so far south, and in some of its forms reaches much farther north, being found on the 5 cold barrens, from Newfoundland to the shores of the Arctic. It is the only animal which is still at certain seasons found in enormous multitudes comparable to the vast herds of bison in the old days, and in parts of its range it is being slaughtered in the same butcherly spirit lo that was responsible for the extinction of the bison. The different kinds of American caribou are closely akin to the reindeer of the Old World, and their long, irregularly branched antlers, wdth palmated ends, their big feet, coarse heads, and stout bodies, render them as easily dis- is tinguishable as the moose. The wapiti or round-homed elk always had its centre of abundance in the United States, though in the West it was also found far north of the Canadian line. This splen- did deer affords a good instance of the difficulty of deciding 20 what name to use in treating of our American game. On the one hand, it is entirely undesirable to be pedantic; and on the other hand, it seems a pity, at a time when speech is written almost as much as spoken, to use terms which perpetually require explanation in order to avoid confu-2S sion. The wapiti is not properly an elk at all; the term wapiti is unexceptionable, and it is greatly to be desired that it should be generally adopted. But unfortunately it has not been generally adopted. From the time when our backwoodsmen first began to hunt the animal among the 30 foot-hills of the Appalachian chains to the present day, it has been universally known as elk wherever it has been 272 ROOSEVELT S WRITINGS found. In ordinary speech it is never known as anything else, and only an occasional settler or hunter would under- stand what the word wapiti referred to. The book name is a great deal better than the common name; but after all, 5 it is only a book name. The case is almost exactly parallel to that of the buffalo, which was really a bison, but which lived as the buffalo, died as the buffalo, and left its name imprinted on our landscape as the buffalo. There is little use in trying to upset a name which is imprinted in our 10 geography in hundreds of such titles as Elk Ridge, Elk Mountain, Elkhorn River. Yet in the books it is often necessary to call it the wapiti in order to distinguish it both from its different named close kinsfolk of the Old World, and from its more distant relatives with which it 15 shares the name of elk. It is the largest of the true deer, and the noblest and stateliest of the deer kind through- out the world. It is closely akin to the much smaller European stag or red deer, and still more closely to certain Asiatic deer, one of which so closely approaches it in size, 20 appearance, and stately presence as to be almost indistin- guishable. Its huge and yet delicately moulded propor- tions, and its massive, rounded antlers, the beam of which bends backward from the head, while the tines are thrust forward, render it impossible to confound it with any 25 other species of American deer. Owing to its habitat it has suffered from the persecution of hunters and settlers more than any other of its fellows in America, and the boimdaries of its range have shrunk in far greater propor- tion. The moose and caribou have in most places greatly 30 diminished in numbers, and have here and there been exterminated altogether from outlying portions of their range; but the wapiti has completely vanished from nine- THE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA 273 tenths of the territory over which it roamed a century and a quarter ago. Although it was never found in any one place in such enormous numbers as the bison and the caribou, it nevertheless went in herds far larger than the herds of any other American game save the two men- 5 tioned, and was formerly very much more abundant within the area of its distribution than was the moose within the area of its distribution. It is now almost lim- ited to certain mountainous areas in the Rockies and on the Pacific coast, — The Pacific coast form differing from lo the ordinary form. The remaining three deer are much more closely con- nected with one another, all belonging to the same genus. The whitetail has always been, and is now, on the whole the commonest of American game, and it has held its is own better than any other kind. It is found from south- ern Canada, in various forms, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, down into South America. It is given various names, and throughout most of its habitat is simply known as ^'deer'^; but wherever it comes in contact with 20 the blacktail it is almost invariably called whitetail. This is a very appropriate name, for its tail is habitually so carried as to be extremely conspicuous, being white and bushy, only the middle part above being dark colored. The antlers curve out and forward, the prongs branch- 25 ing from the posterior surface. The Rocky Mountain blacktail or mule-deer is some- what larger, wdth large ears, its tail short-haired and round, white excepting for a black tip, and with antlers which fork evenly like the prongs of a pitchfork, — so that it 30 is difficult to say which prong should be considered the main shaft, — and each prong itself bifurcates again. In 274 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS the books this animal is called the mule-deer, but through- out its haunts it is almost always known simply as the blacktaiL It is found in rough, broken country from the Bad Lands of the western Dakotas to the Pacific coast, sand is everywhere the characteristic deer of the Rocky Mountains. The southern Cahfornia form is peculiar, especially in having a dark stripe on the tail above. The true blacktail is found on the Pacific coast from southern Alaska to northern California. Its horns are 10 like those of the Rocky Mountain blacktail; its tail is more like that of the whitetail, but is not as large, and the white is much reduced, the color above and on the sides, to the very tip, being barely black. The most striking and melancholy feature in connection 15 with American big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished. When, just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunters of the back- woods first penetrated the great forests west of the Alle- ghanies, deer, elk, black bear, and even buffalo swarmed 20 in what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee; and the country north of the Ohio was a great and almost virgin hunting-ground. From that day to this the shrink- age has gone on, only partially checked here and there, and never arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical 25 accuracy, however, it is well to bear in mind that a great many writers in lamenting this extinction of the game have, from time to time, anticipated or overstated the facts. Thus as good an author as Colonel Richard Irving Dodge spoke of the buffalo as practically extinct, while 30 the great northern herd still existed in countless thousands. As early as 1880 very good sporting authorities spoke not only of the buffalo but of the elk, deer, and antelope THE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA 275 as no longer to be found in plenty; and within a year one of the greatest of living hunters has stated that it is no longer possible to find any American wapiti bearing heads comparable with the red deer of Hungary. As a matter of fact, in the early eighties there were still great regions 5 where every species of game that had ever been known within historic times on our continent were still to be found as plentifully as ever. In the early nineties there were still large regions in which this was true of all game except the buffalo; for instance, it was true of the elk in lo portions of northwestern Wyoming, of the blacktail in northwestern Colorado, of the whitetail here and there in the Indian Territory, and of the antelope in parts of New Mexico. Even at the present day there are smaller, but still considerable regions where these four animals is are yet found in great abundance, and I have seen antlers of wapiti shot in 1900 far surpassing any of which there is record from Hungary. In New England and New York, as well as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the whitetail deer is more plentiful than it was thirty years ago, and 20 in Maine (and to an even greater extent in New Brunswick the moose and caribou have, on the whole, increased during the same period. There is yet ample opportunity for the big game hunter in the United States and Canada; while not even in the old days was it possible to go on 25 any trip better worth taking than the recent successful hunt of Mr. Dall DeWeese, of Canon City, Colorado, after the giant moose, giant bear, white sheep, and caribou of Alaska. While it is necessary to give this word of warning to 30 those who, in praising time past, always forget the oppor- tunities of the present, it is a thousand fold more necessary 276 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS to remember that these opportunities are, nevertheless, vanishing; and if we are a sensible people, we will make it our business to see that the process of extinction is arrested. At the present moment the great herds of 5 caribou are being butchered as in the past the great herds of bison and wapiti have been butchered. Every believer in manliness, and therefore in manly sport, and every lover of nature, every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of wild Hfe, should 10 strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish to pre- serve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and our game beasts, game birds, and game fish — indeed all the living creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore — ^from wanton destruction. THE WHITETAIL DEER The whitetail deer is now, as it always has been, the most plentiful and most widely distributed of American big game. It holds its own in the land better than any other species, because it is by choice a dweller in the thick forests and swamps, the places around which the tide of 5 civiUzation flows, leaving them as islets of refuge for the wild creatures which formerly haunted all the country. The range of the whitetail is from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, and somewhat to the north and far to the south of these lo limits. The animal shows a wide variability, both in- dividually and locally, within these confines; from the hunter's standpoint it is not necessary to tr^^ to determine exactl}^ the weight that attaches to these local variations. There is also a very considerable variation in habits, is As compared with the mule-deer, the whitetail is not a lover of the mountains. As compared with the prong- buck, it is not a lover of the treeless plains. Yet in the AUeghanies and the Adirondacks, at certain seasons espe- cially, and in some places at all seasons, it dwells high 20 among the densely wooded mountains, wandering over their crests and sheer sides, and through the deep ravines; while in the old days there were parts of Texas and the Indian Territory where it was found in great herds far out on the prairie. Moreover, the peculiar nature of its 25 chosen habitat, while generally enabhng it to resist the onslaught of man longer than any of its fellows, some- times exposes it to speedy extermination. To the west- ward of the rich bottom-lands and low prairies of the 277 278 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS Mississippi Valley proper, when the dry plains country is reached, the natural conditions are much less favor- able for whitetail than for other big game. The black bear, which in the East has almost precisely the same 5 habitat as the whitetail, disappears entirely on the great plains, and reappears in the Rockies in regions which the whitetail does not reach. All over the great plains, into the foot-hills of the Rockies, the whitetail is found, but only in the thick timber of the river bottoms. Through- 10 out the regions of the Upper Missouri and Upper Platte, the Big Horn, Powder, Yellowstone, and Cheyenne, over all of which I have hunted, the whitetail lives among the Cottonwood groves and dense brush growth that fringe the river beds and here and there extend some distance up the 15 mouths of the large creeks. In these places the whitetail and the mule-deer may exist in close proximity; but nor- mally neitherinvades the haunts of the other. Along the ordinary plains river, such as the Little Mis- souri, where I ranched for many years, there are three 20 entirely different types of country through which a man passes as he travels away from the bed of the river. There is first the alluvial river bottom covered with Cottonwood and box-elder, together with thick brush. These bottoms may be a mile or two across, or they may shrink to but a 25 few score yards. After the extermination of the wapiti, which roamed everjnvhere, the only big game animal found in them was the whitetail deer. Beyond this level alluvial bottom the ground changes abruptly to bare, rugged hills or fantastically carved and shaped Bad Lands 30 rising on either side of the river, the ravines, coulies, creeks, and canyons twisting through them in every di- rection. Here there are patches of ash, cedar, pine, and THE WHITETAIL DEER 279 occasionally other trees, but the country is very rugged, and the cover very scanty. This is the home of the mule- deer, and, in the roughest and wildest parts, of the big- horn. The absolutely clear and sharply defined line of demarkation between this rough, hilly country, flanking 5 the river, and the alluvial river bottom, serves as an equally clearly marked line of demarkation between the ranges of the whitetail and the mule-deer. This belt of broken country ma}^ be only a few hundred yards in width; or it may extend for a score of miles before it changes into the lo open prairies, the high plains proper. As soon as these are reached, the prongbuck's domain begins. As the plains country is passed, and the vast stretches of mountainous region entered, the river bottoms become narrower, and the plains on which the prongbuck is found 15 become of very limited extent, shrinking to high valleys and plateaus, while the mass of rugged foot-hills and moun- tains add immensely to the area of the mule-deer's habitat. Given equal areas of country, of the three different types alluded to above, that in which the mule-deer is 20 found offers the greatest chance of success to the rifle- bearing hunter, because there is enough cover to shield him and not enough to allow his quarry to escape by stealth and hiding. On the other hand, the thick river bottoms offer him the greatest difficulty. In consequence, 25 where the areas of distribution of the different game ani- mals are about equal, the mule-deer disappears first be- fore the hunter, the prongbuck next, while the whitetail holds out the best of all. I saw this frequently on the Yellowstone, the Powder, and the Little Missouri. When 30 the ranchman first came into this country the mule-deer swarmed, and yielded a far more certain harvest to the 280 ROOSEVELTS WRITINGS hunter than did either the prongbuck or the whitetaiL They were the first to be thinned out, the prongbuck lasting much better. The cowboys and small ranchmen, most of whom did not at the time have hounds, then fol- 5 lowed the prongbuck; and this, in its turn, was killed out before the whitetaiL But in other places a slight change in the conditions completely reversed the order of de- struction. In parts of Wyoming and Montana the moun- tainous region where the mule-deer dwelt was of such 10 vast extent, and the few river bottoms on which the whitetail were found were so easily hunted, that the white- tail was completely exterminated throughout large dis- tricts where the mule-deer continued to abound. More- over, in these regions the tablelands and plains upon which 15 the prongbuck was found were limited in extent, and al- though the prongbuck outlasted the whitetail, it vanished long before the herds of the mule-deer had been destroyed from among the neighboring mountains. The whitetail was originally far less common in the 20 forests of northern New England than v/as the moose, for in the deep snows the moose had a much better chance to escape from its brute foes and to withstand cold and starvation. But when man appeared upon the scene he followed the moose so much more eagerly than he followed 25 the deer that the conditions were reversed and the moose was killed out. The moose thus vanished entirely from the Adirondacks, and almost entirely from Maine; but the excellent game laws of the latter state, and the honesty and efficiency with which they have been executed during 30 the last twenty years, has resulted in an increase of moose during that time. During the same period the whitetail deer has increased to an even greater extent. It is doubt- THE WHITETAIL DEER 281 less now more plentiful in New York and New England than it was a quarter of a century ago. Stragglers are found in Connecticut, and, what is still more extraordi- nary, even occasionally come into wild parts of densely populated little Rhode Island, — my authority for the last 5 statement being Mr. C. Grant La Farge. Of all our wild game, the whitetail responds most quickly to the efforts for its protection, and except the wapiti, it thrives best in semi-domestication; in consequence, it has proved easy to preserve it, even in such places as Cape Code in Mas- lo sachusetts and Long Island in New York; while it has in- creased greatly in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, and has more than held its own in the Adirondacks. Mr. James R. Sheffield, of New York City, in the summer of 1899, spent several weeks on a fishing trip through north- is em Maine. He kept count of the moose and deer he saw, and came across no less than thirty-five of the former and over five hundred and sixty of the latter; in the most lonely parts of the forest deer were found by the score, feeding in broad daylight on the edges of the ponds. Deer 20 are still plentiful in many parts of the Alleghany Moun- tains, from Pennsylvania southward, and also in the swamps and cane-brakes of the South Atlantic and Gulf states. Where the differences in habitat and climate are so 25 great there are may changes of habits, and some of them of a noteworthy kind. Mr. John A. Mclllhenny, of Avery's Island, Louisiana, formerly a lieutenant in my regiment,"^ lives in what is still a fine game country. His plantation is in the delta of the Mississippi, among the vast marshes, 30 north of which lie the wooded swamps. Both the marshes and the swamps were formerly literally thronged with 282 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS whitetail deer, and the animals are still plentiful in them. Mr. Mclllhenny has done much deer-hunting, always using hounds. He informs me that the breeding times are unexpectedly different from those of the northern 5 deer. In the North, in different localities, the rut takes place in October or November, and the fawns are dropped in May or June. In the Louisiana marshes around Av- ery's Island the rut begins early in July and the fawns are dropped in February. In the swamps immediately 10 north of these marshes the dates are fully a month later. The marshes are covered with tall reeds and grass, and broken by bayous, while there are scattered over them what are called ^^ islands" of firmer ground overgrown with timber. In this locality the deer live in the same 15 neighborhood all the year round, just as, for instance, they do on Long Island. So on the Little Missouri, in the neighborhood of my ranch, they lived in exactly the same localities throughout the entire year. Occasionally they would shift from one river bottom to another, or go 20 a few miles up or down stream because of scarcity of food. But there was no general shifting. On the Little Missouri, in one place where they were not molested, I knew a particular doe and fawn with whose habits I became quite intimately acquainted. 25 When the moon was full they fed chiefly by night, and spent most of the day lying in the thick brush. When there was little or no moon they would begin to feed early in the morning, then take a siesta, and then — what struck me as most curious of all — would go to a little willow- 30 bordered pool about noon to drink, feeding for some time before and after drinking. After another siesta they would come out late in the afternoon and feed until dark. THE WHITETAIL DEEH 283 In the Adirondacks the deer often alter their habits completely at different seasons. Soon after the fawns are born they come down to the water^s edge, preferring the neighborhood of the lakes, but also haunting the stream banks. The next three months, during the hot weather, 5 they keep very close to the water, and get a large propor- tion of their food by wading in after the lilies and other aquatic plants. Where they are much hunted, they only come to the water's edge after dark, but in regions where they are little disturbed they are quite as often diurnal lo in their habits. I have seen dozens feeding in the neigh- borhood of a lake, some of them two or three hundred yards out of the shallow places, up to their bellies; and this after sunrise, or two or three hours before sunset. Be- fore September the deer cease coming to the water, and 15 go back among the dense forests and on the mountains. There is no genuine migration, as in the case of the mule- deer, from one big tract to another, and no entire deser- tion of any locality. But the food supply which drew the animals to the water's edge during the summer months 20 shows signs of exhaustion toward fall; the delicate water- plants have vanished, the marsh-grass is dying, and the lilies are less succulent. An occasional deer still wanders along the shores or out into the lake, but most of them begin to roam the woods, eating the berries and the leaves 25 and twig ends of the deciduous trees, and even of some of the conifers, although a whitetail is fond of grazing, especially upon the tips of the grass itself. I have seen moose feeding on the tough old lily stems and wading after them when the ice had skimmed the edges of the 30 pool. But the whitetail has usually gone back into the woods long before freezing time. 284 ROOSEVELT'S WRITINGS From Long Island south there is not enough snow to make the deer alter their habits in the winter. As soon as the rut is over, which in different localities may be from October to December, whitetail are apt to band together — 5 more apt than at any other season, although even then they are often found singly or in small parties. While nursing, the does have been thin, and at the end of the rut the bucks are gaunt, with their necks swollen and distended. From that time on bucks and does alike put 10 on flesh very rapidly in preparation for the winter. Where there is no snow, or not enough to interfere with their travelling, they continue to roam anywhere through the woods and across the natural pastures and meadows, eating twigs, buds, nuts, and the natural hay which is 15 cured on the stalk. In the northern woods they form yards during the win- ter. These yards are generally found in a hardwood growth which offers a supply of winter food, and consist simply of a tangle of winding trails beaten out through the snow 20 by the incessant passing and repassing of the animal. The yard merely enables the deer to move along the various paths in order to obtain food. If there are many deer to- gether, the 3^ards may connect by interlacing paths, so that a deer can run a considerable distance through them. 25 Often, however, each deer will yard by itself, as food is the prime consideration, and a given locality may only have enough to support a single animal. When the snows grow deep the deer is wholly unable to move, once the yard is left, and hence it is absolutely at the mercy of a 30 man on snow-shoes, or of a cougar or a wolf, if found at such times. The man on snow-shoes can move very comfortably; and the cougar and the wolf, although THE WHITETAIL DEER 285 hampered by the snow, are not rendered helpless like the deer. I have myself scared a deer out of a yard and seen it flounder helplessly in a great drift before it had gone thirty rods. When I came up close it ploughed its way a very short distance through the drifts, making tremen- 5 dous leaps. But as the snow was over six feet deep, so that the deer sank below the level of the surface at each jump, and yet could not get its feet on the solid ground, it became so exhausted that it fell over on its side and bleated in terror as I came up; after looking at it I passed lo on. Hide hunters and frontier settlers sometimes go out after the deer on snow-shoes when there is a crust, and hence this method of killing is called crusting. It is simply butchery, for the deer cannot, as the moose does, cause its pursuer a chase which may last days. No self-respect- is ing man would follow this method of hunting save from the necessity of having meat. In very wild localities deer sometimes yard on the ice along the edges of lakes, eating off att the twigs and branches, whether of hardwood trees or of conifers, which 20 they can reach. At the beginning of the rut the does flee from the bucks, which follow them by scent at full speed. The white- tail buck rarely tries to form a herd of does, though he will sometimes gather two or three. The mere fact 25 that his tactics necessitate a long and arduous chase after each individual doe prevents his organizing herds as the wapiti b^ill does. Sometimes two or three bucks will be found s^: ^Tnpathy with the reforms he represented recognized his sincerity, fairness, and energy. Roosevelt resigned from the Civil Service Commission in May, 1895, and accepted one of the Police Commis- sionerships tendered him by Mayor Strong of New York City. Roosevelt was chosen president of the Board, and from the first stamped his personality on the Department. The new board found the police force in a thoroughly de- moralized and disorganized condition, but it was able to bring order out of chaos and enforce a strict discipline which soon improved the morale of the force. Roosevelt resigned his position as Police Commissioner in March, 1897, to return to Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy^ 65 : 3. Lodge. Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-) is a prom- inent American politician. He has been United States Senator from Massachusetts since 1893. 58 : 2. Captain Mahan. Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840- 1914) was an eminent American naval officer who wrote several important books oh naval history and strategy. 330 NOTES 58 : 15. Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States. 60 : 1. the Maine. The blowing up of the United States battleship Maine in Havana harbor on the evening of February 15, 1898, with the loss of 266 men was the critical incident that provoked hostilities between the United States and Spain. 60 : 15. Apaches. One of the Western Indian tribes, formerly living chiefly in New Mexico and Arizona, which gave a great deal of trouble in the early settlement of the West. 61 : 1. Alger. Russell Alexander Alger (1836-1907) was an American soldier and politician. He was at one time Governor of Michigan and in President McKinley's cabinet he was Secretary of War. His administration of the War Department during the Spanish-American War was severely criticized, but an investigating committee in the main exonerated him. 62 : 7. San Antonio. The leading city in western Texas. 63 : 3. Tampa. Tampa, Florida, situated on Tampa Bay, was an embarkation point during the Spanish- American War. 64 : 6. good record. In the first conflict with the Spanish at Las Guasimas on June 24, 1898, the Rough Riders saw severe fighting and conducted themselves well. Before another engagement. Wood was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and Roosevelt became com- mander of the regiment. In the fighting in connection with the assault of Santiago, July 1, 1898, Roosevelt dis- played great bravery, leading his men in person. Before the fighting was over, the death or wounding of the other NOTES 331 commanding officers left him the ranking officer of the brigade. The regiment was mider fire all the next day and night, but maintained the position on the hills it had won. The regiment lay in the trenches before the city until its surrender, Roosevelt being in command of the second brigade of the cavalry division, from, the middle of July. It was during this period that the incident of the famous '' round robin '' letter occurred. The officers and men who had undergone the hardships of the campaign were anxious to return North to recuperate, now that the fight- ing was over for the time being. The damp summer sea- son with its malaria and yellow fever was approaching. They had not complained when there was fighting to be done, but they objected to being sacrificed to no good purpose. On August 4, all the general officers of General Shafter's command united in a letter of protest asking that the troops be moved North, and declaring that the " army must be moved at once or perish.'' Although there was a tendency to criticize the letter, which had been composed by Roosevelt, as unmilitary and subversive of good discipline, yet it accomplished the end sought. General Shafter concurred in its request and transmitted it to the War Department with the result that in three days the entire command was ordered North. Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were ordered to Camp Wyckoff, at Montauk Point, where they arrived on August 15 and were shortly afterwards mustered out. The Presidency 65 : 1. President McKinley. William McKinley (1843-1901) was the twenty-fifth President of the United States. After his first term (1897-1901) he had been re- 332 NOTES elected for a second term. While he was taking part in a public reception at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, he was shot by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz. 65 : 24. Loeb. William Loeb, the private secretary of President McKinley who served Roosevelt in the same capacity during his Presidency. 66 : 19. to show my competence by my deeds. That Roosevelt fulfilled this expectation is shown by the fact that after completing the unexpired term of McKinley, he was nominated in 1904 to succeed himself. He was elected by the largest popular majority ever given for any Presidential candidate. Space does not permit an account of Roosevelt^s ad- ministration. Suffice it to say that the seven and a half years which he spent in the White House were crowded with achievements of national and international signifi- cance. His relation to '^ big business '^ and to labor, his policy regarding the conservation of natural resources, his upholding of the Monroe doctrine in the Venezuela affair, his service as peace-maker between Japan and Russia, his interest in developing the efficiency of the navy, his se- curing the enactment of laws controlling the matter of railway rates, and his steps toward the building of the Panama Canal, were some of the outstanding features of his administration. In the fall of 1913 Roosevelt left the United States for his second extended hunting and exploring expedition. This time he went to South America and after many months in the jungle emerged to tell the world that he had discovered a river one thousand miles long, which he named the Rio Duvido, or River of Doubt. NOTES 333 In 1914 Roosevelt refused the Progressive nomination for Governor of New York, and between that time and 1916 he became reconciled to the Republican Party. He was a candidate for the Presidential nomination m 191b but when Charles E. Hughes was nominated he supported him vigorously. Though denied an active part m the war Roosevelt, despite failing health, from time to time made addresses urging a tireless prosecution of the war. On the day the armistice was signed, he had to go to the hospital on account of inflammatory rheumatism. Happily he was able to be at home for Christmas and spent a happy hohday season with those of his children and grandchildren who could be present. The last day of his life, January 5th, was spent m read- ing and writing at his home. He spent the evening with his family and went to bed at eleven o'clock. Shortly after four o'clock the next morning, his personal attendant, who was sleeping in the next room, noticed that his breath- ing was unnatural. He hurriedly called the trained nurse who was sleeping nearby, but when they reached Roose- velt's beside, they found that a clot of blood, settling upon a vital spot, had brought him peaceful death. His burial was without pomp and circumstance, his last resting place being a beautiful spot on a knoll looking over Long Island Sound. There among the woods and hills which he had loved since boyhood he was fittingly left to lie. ^ -. The public life of Roosevelt should not obscure his family life in the memory of the American people. As has been well said, " His family life was as intense as his public hfe. His wife and children and home were next 334 NOTES to his heart, together with his country. He believed that the strength of the nation lay in the tenderness and in the fine love of American parents and children for one another, and in his own life he practiced his belief/^ It seems fitting therefore to close these selections from his Autobiography with a portion of the chapter in which he drew a most engaging picture of his life at Sagamore Hill. As a supple- ment to this chapter, Roosevelt's Letters to his Children should be read. Outdoors and Indoors 69 : 16. Burroughs. John Burroughs (1836-) is an American nature-lover and writer between whom and Roosevelt there was a warm friendship. 71 : 1. Harris. Roosevelt had great admiration for Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus books. In a letter included in Mrs. Julia Collier Harris's life of her father-in-law, Roosevelt has written as follows: '^ When I became President, I set my heart on having Joel Chandler Harris a guest at the White House. But to get him there proved no easy task. He was a very shy, sensitive, re- tiring man, who shrank from all publicity, and to whom it was really an agony to be made much of in public. But I knew that he liked me; and I had the able assistance of Julian (Harris's son), who remarked to me: ' I'll get father up to see you if I have to blindfold him and back him into the White House.' Fortunately such extreme meas- ures were not necessar}^; but I shall never forget the smile of triumph with which Julian did actually deliver the somewhat deprecatory ' father ' inside the White House doors. But I think he soon felt at home. He loved the children, and at dinner that evening we had no outsider NOTES 335 except Fitzhugh Lee, who was a close family friend, and with whom I knew he would get on well. '^ In a little while he was completely at ease; . . . and after half an hour he was talking and laughing freely, and exchanging anecdotes and comparing reminiscences. When he left next morning all of our family agreed that we had never received at the White House a pleasanter friend or a man whom we more delighted to honor. '^ {Joel Chandler Harris, pages 514 and 515.) 71 : 15. the SeQUoias. The Sequoia giganteay found in California, is the largest American forest tree. The aver- age height of the trees is about 275-300 feet and the trunk diameter 30-35 feet near the ground. 71 : 16. Muir. John Muir (1838-1914) was an Amer- ican naturalist and writer. He did much exploring not only in the far West and in Alaska, but also in other re- mote and unfamiliar parts of the world. He found time to write entertainingly articles and books about his ex- periences and his observations in the field of natural history. 71 : 19. Emorson. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a famous American poet and essayist. In 1871, he made a lecture tour as far west as California. 74 : 18. Poe. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was the famous American poet and prose-writer. 75 : 21. Gaston PhODbus. Gaston III (1331-1391; was one of the counts of Foix, an old and distinguished French family which flourished from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Gaston III was surnamed Phcebus (Apollo) on account of his beauty. He was very fond of hunting and wrote a book entitled Pleasures of Huntin-g Wild Beasts and Birds of Prey, 336 NOTES 75 : 22. Emperor Maximilian. Maximilian I (1459- 1519) was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1493-1519. He was the author of books on the art of war, hunting, gardening, etc. 76 : 10. Gibbon. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), the English historian whose The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of the greatest histories ever written. 76 : 10. Macaulay. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), an English historian and essayist, whose chief historical work is History of England covering the reigns of James II and William HI. 76 : 10. Herodotus. A celebrated Greek historian (?484-?424 B. C), sometimes called '' the Father of His- tory ^' who wrote a history of the Persian invasion of Greece. 76 : 11. Thucydides. A noted Greek historian (?471- ?401 B. C.) who began an elaborate History of tJie Pelopon- nesian TFar, which, however, he did not live to finish. 76 : 11. Tacitus. A celebrated Roman historian {Ib^ ?after 117) v^'hose Germania gives an account of the Ger- man tribes. 76 : 11. Heimskringla. An important prose history of the Norse Kings from the earliest times to the battle of Re in 1177. The author was an Icelander, Snorri Sturlusow (1178-1241). 76 : 11. Froissart. Jean Froissart (1337-?1410) was a celebrated French historian whose great work is Chron- icles of France, England, Italy, and Spain relating the his- torical events from 1332 till 1400. 76 : 12. Joinvilie. Jean de Joinville (?1224-1317) was a French chronicler, author of History of St. Louis, NOTES 337 76 : 12. Villehardouin. Geoffroi de Villehardouin (?1150-?1212) was a French historian who has left a val- uable account of the Fourth Crusade (1198-1207) in which he was an active participant. 76 : 12. Parkman. Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was an American historian whose works include Conspiracy of PontiaCj Pioneers of France in the New Worlds Jesuits in North America, Discovery of the Great West, The Old Re- gime in Canada, Montcalm and Wolfe, and The Cali- fornia and Oregon Trail, to mention only the more im- portant. 76 : 12. Mahan. See above 58 : 2. 76 : 13. Mommsen. Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), a celebrated German historian, whose principal work is Roman History. 76 : 13. Ranke. Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), a German historian, author of several noted historical works, dealing with different phases of European history, espe- cially with German}^ 76 : 16. Darwin. Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), a celebrated English scientist, whose chief work. Origin of Species (1859), propounded the theory of biological evolution. 76 : 16. Huxley. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the great English scientists. He became the champion of Darwin^s evolutionary theories and defended them stoutly in his writings and speeches. He had a re- markable gift for popularizing in his writings scientific facts and theories. 76 : 17. Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle (1795^1881) was a noted English essayist and historian of Scotch descent. Among his best known books are Sartor Resartus, The 338 NOTES French Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worshipy Past and Present J and History of Frederick the Great. 76 : 17. Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the great American essayist, whose various writings have stimulated many in an ethical way. 76 : 17. Kant. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a noted German philosopher. 76 : 18. Sutherland's. Alexander Sutherland (1852- 1902) was an Australian journalist. Roosevelt refers here to his Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct (1898). 76 : 19. Acton. Lord Acton (1834-1902) was a noted English historian who in the latter part of his life was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford Uni- versity. 76 : 19. Lounsbury. Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (1838-) was for a long time professor of English at Yale University. Among his writings were Studies in Chaucer and several volumes of Shakespearean studies. 77 : 10. One Hundred Best Books. Sir John Lub- bock, an English scientist of the nineteenth century, drew up a list of the '^ hundred best books '^ in the world's lit- erature which attracted much attention. 77 : 10. Five-Foot Library. Several j^ears ago President Eliot of Harvard made the statement that all the books really necessary to culture could be gathered together on a shelf five feet long. Later, he made this statement ex- plicit by drawing up a list of the books to be included in this library. 77:21. Milton. John Milton (1608-1674), a celebrated English poet, author of Paradise Lost, regarded as the most sublime poem in English literature. NOTES 339 77 • 22. Pope. Alexander Pope (1688-1744), a famous English poet, noted for his success in brilliant, epigram- matic satiric verse. 77 : 22. Whitman. Walt Whitman (1819-1892), an American poet, whose formless but vigorous poetry as represented in Leaves of Grass was a forerunner of the modern free verse. 77 : 23. Browning. Robert Browning (1812-1889), an English poet, whose poetry is difficult to read but very 77 : 23. Lowell. James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), an American poet. 77 : 24. Tennyson. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), a celebrated English poet. ,,^,, ^ 77 :24. Kipling. Rudyard Kiplmg (1865-), an Eng- lish poet popular for vivid, vigorous verse. 77 : 24. Korner. Karl Theodor Korner (1791-1813), a German lyric poet whose short hfe closed on the battle- field. Many of his poems were written while in army service, the appropriate title of his volume of verse, pub- lished after his death, being Lz/re and Sword. 11 : 24. Heine. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), a Ger- man lyric poet of Hebrew descent. 77 : 25. Bard of the Dimbovitza. The title of an interesting collection of Roumanian folk-songs collected from the peasants in the valley of the Dimbovitza by Helena Vacaresco and published in an English translation 77 : 25. Tolstoy's. Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), a Russian novelist and social reformer, whose chief novels are War and Peace and Anna Karenina. 11 : 26. Sienkiewicz. Henryk Sienkiewicz (1845-) 340 NOTES was a Polish novelist. Quo Vadisfy a picture of Roman life in the time of Nero, being his best known book. 77 : 27. ** Salammbo/' A novel by the French nov- elist Flaubert based upon the history of HannibaFs sister Salammbo. 77 : 27. " Tom Brown/' The two famous books by Thomas Hughes, Toin Brown^s School-days and Tom Brown at Oxford^ illustrating respectively public school and col- legiate life in England. 77 : 28. '* Two Admirals." A novel of sea adventure by James Fenimore Cooper. 77 : 28. '* Quentin Durward.'' A historical romance by Sir Walter Scott. 77 : 29. *' Artemus Ward." The pseudonym of C. F. Browne (1834-1867), an American humorist. 77 : 29. " Ingoldsby Legends." A series of satirical stories in prose and verse written about the middle of the nineteenth century by Barham, whose pen-name was Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq. 77 : 30. '* Pickwick." The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens. 77:30. ''Vanity Fair." The most representative novel of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863). 78 : 17. Macbeth. One of Shakespeare^s tragedies dealing with deep passions that lead to violence and crime. 78 : 17. Hamlet. Another of Shakespeare's tragedies which is more thoughtful and poetic than Macbeth. 82 : 20. Farragut. David Glasgow Farragut (1801- 1870), a celebrated American admiral, who directed many brilliant naval campaigns during the Civil War. August 5, 1864, with eighteen ships, four of them monitors, Farragut ran past the batteries guarding entrance to Mobile bay, NOTES 341 and engaged the Confederate fleet within the bay. His defeat of the Confederate ironclad, Tennessee, was the notable achievement of this expedition. 85 : 15. Jonathan Edwards. The bear derived his name from an eminent American theologian of the eight- eenth century whose doctrines represented the extreme views of the New England Puritans on points of Calvin- istic theology. 88 : 15. '* Kim.*' The hero of a story by Kipling tell- ing the adventures of an Irish waif in India who acquired marvelous knowledge of the Orient. HISTORY The Backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies It was with historical writing that Roosevelt began his literary career, his first volume being The History of the Naval War of 1812, Although this was the work of a young man just twenty-three years old it was an exceed- ingly meritorious performance in that it corrected many mistakes of earlier historians and showed an impartiality of judgment. His longest and most painstaking historical work is The Winning of the West, the four volumes of which were written from 1889 to 1896. So excellent is this account of our territorial expansion from 1769-1807 and of the men to whom it was due that many regard it as Roose- velt^s most enduring contribution to literature. When one considers the difficulty of finding and collecting ma- terial in this field thirty years ago, he cannot fail to feel that Roosevelt^s achievement was a remarkable one. One of the most striking chapters in this book is the one here 342 NOTES reprinted which gives vivid picture of the life and charac- ter of the men who played so large a part in the develop- ment of American civilization. 93 : 22. Fort Pitt. Located at what is now Pittsburg. 93 : 23. Cherokees. An Indian tribe which occupied the mountainous section of North Carolina and Georgia. 94 : 8. Quakers. Members of the religious denomina- tion known as the Society of Friends which took its rise in England about the middle of the seventeenth century. 94 : 23. Scotch-Irish. This term does not indicate, as many people suppose, mixed Scotch and Irish descent. It denotes the descendants of the early Scotch Presbyterian who settled, for a hundred years or more after 1600, with their wives and families in Ulster, in the north of Ireland. For a hundred years after 1700 their descendants seeking to escape civil and religious burdens that were intolerable, sought a more promising home in America. They became an important ingredient in the American population. 94 : 24. Roundhead. A member of the Puritan party during the English Civil War in the seventeenth century. This nickname was applied to the Puritans because of their custom of w^earing their hair cut short in contrast to the general custom of the time, 94 : 24. Cavalier. The adherents of Charles I of Eng- land during the Civil War in the seventeenth century. 94:27. Huguenot. The French Calvinists were known as Huguenots. During the 16th and 17th centuries they were subjected to much persecution on account of their Protestant faith. To escape these persecutions thousands of the Huguenots left France and settled in other coun- tries, many going to America. 94 : 30. Knox. John I^ox (1505-1572) was a Scotch NOTES 343 divine who was a leader in the establishment of Presbyte- rianism in Scotland. 94:30. Calvin. John Calvin (1509-1564) was the noted Protestant reformer and founder of Presbyterian- ism. 94 : 31. Covenanters. Those in Scotland who in the seventeenth century bound themselves by a solemn cov- enant to uphold and maintain the Presbyterian doctrine and scheme of church government against Catholicism and Anglicanism. 95 : 13. Milesian Irish. Descendants of the original Gaelic colonists of Ireland who were called Milesians be- cause according to the legend they sprang from the three sons of Mil, or Milesius, who came from Spain or Gaul and conquered the preceding inhabitants some centuries be- fore the Christian era. 96 : 20. Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was the Puritan leader who became ruler of England from 1653- 1658 with the title of Lord Protector. 95 : 21. Derry. The city of Derry (now known morb commonly as Londonderry) was successfully defended by the Irish Protestants when James II of England attacked it during his expedition into Ireland, 1689. 95 : 22. Boyne. A river in Ireland on whose banks in 1690 the army of James II was heavily defeated. 95 : 22. Aughrim. An Irish village where in 1691 the English defeated an army of the Irish and French. 96 : 11. independence. The reference is to the Meck- lenburg Declaration drawn up by the citizens of Mecklen- burg County, North Carolina, in 1775. It is believed by some to have antedated the Philadelphia Declaration but this view is not generally held by historians. 344 NOTES 106 : 17. pankraition. Among the Olympic games of the Greeks this was a contest involving a combination of boxing and wrestling. The combatants fought naked, their bodies being oiled and sprinkled with sand for the sake of a better hold. . It seems to have been very much of the nature of a rough-and-tumble fight although there were rules governing the contest. 106 : 24. Kenton. Simon Kenton (1755-1836) was an American pioneer whose fame as a frontier hero was second only to that of Daniel Boone. 106 : 32. pillion. A pad or cushion placed behind a saddle as a seat for a second person, usually a woman. 107 : 18. noggins. Wooden mugs. The Historian of the Future This selection is from Roosevelt^s address as president of the American Historical Association, delivered at the Boston meeting, December 27, 1912. The title, ''History as Literature," indicated that Roosevelt was discussing the topic whether history should be treated in a cold and dispassionate scientific manner or whether it should be presented as a vivid story with emphasis on man as the principal factor. His position is sufiiciently indicated in the portion of the address which is here given. The last two or three paragraphs of the selection have been much admired as one of the most striking and eloquent passages in all Roosevelt's writings. 121 : 8. Ten Thousand. In the campaign of Cyxus the Younger against the Persians, the Greek army of 10,000 was forced to retreat after the death of C>tus in the battle of Cunaxa. ^^ At last one day — in the fifth month — Feb- ruary 400 B. C. — Xenophon, who was with the rearguard. NOTES 345 heard a great shouting among the men who had reached the top of a hill in front. He thought they saw an enemy. He mounted his horse, and galloped forward with some cavalry. As thej^ came nearer, they could make out the shout: it was ^^ The sea! the sea! There, far off was the silver gleam of the Euxine. After the long, intense strain of toil and danger, the men burst into tears: like true Greek children of the sea they knew now that they were in sight of home.^' (Jebb^s Greek Literature, p. 110.) 121 : 10. Jehu. See Bible, II Kings IX. In his usur- pation of the throne of Israel, Jehu killed Jezebel, the queen-mother. 121 : 11. Ahab. See Bible, / Kings XXII, 2^40. Ahab was a King of Israel who was killed in battle with Jehoshaphet, King of Judah. 121 : 12. Josiah. See Bible, II Kings XXII-XXIII and II Chronicles XXXIV, XXXV. When Pharaoh- Necho went from Egypt to carry on his war with Assyria, Josiah, King of Judah, opposed his march. In the sub- sequent battle Josiah was killed. 121 : 19. Shalmaneser. Shalmaneser and Sargon were Assyrian rulers, Amenhotep and Rameses, Egyptian. 121 : 23. Peloponnesian War. A war extending from 431 to 404 B. C. between the Athenians and their aUies and the Peloponnesian Confederacy embracing the Spartans and their allies. The result was a victory for Athens. 122 : 3. Richard III. In the play Richard III, Shake- speare has represented this king as more cruel and blood- thirsty than modem historians beheve him to have been. This was due to Shakespeare's use of a biassed history popular in his day. But so vivid is his portrayal of Richard that most persons hold their ideas of him from the play. 346 NOTES 122 : 4. Keats. In Keats^ poem On First Looking into Chapman's Homer ^ he made the mistake of referring to Cortez as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean when he should have said Balboa. 122 : 11. Napier. Sir William F. P. Napier (1785- 1860) was a British general who saw service in the Penin- sular campaigns. Afterwards he wrote a full account of the campaign, in six volumes, entitled History of the Peninsular War, which described vividly the deeds of the English in such engagements as Roosevelt men- tions. 122 : 13. Parkman. See note 76 : 12. 122 : 14. Montcalm. Marquis de Montcalm (1712- 1759) was the general commanding the French forces in the struggle around Quebec in 1759. An account of his death together with that of Wolfe may be found in Parkman 's France and England in North America, Part VII. 122 : 14. Wolfe. James Wolfe (1727-1759) was an Eng- lish general commanding the English forces in the attack on Quebec in 1759. As he led the decisive charge, he was kiUed. 122 : 15. Fitzgerald. Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) was an English poet whose fame is due almost wholly to his translation, from the Persian, of the Ruhdiydt of Omar Khayyam. His rendering of this old poem seems final so far as English literature is concerned. 122 : 20. Gibbon. See note 76 : 10. 123 : 3. Maspero. Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (1846-) is a distinguished French authority on Egyptian history. 123 : 4. Breasted. James Henry Breasted (1865-) is an American authority on Oriental history. He has writ- NOTES 347 ten several books, his Ancient Records of Egypt being one of his most notable. 123 : 4. Weigall. Arthur Edward P. B. Weigall (1880-) is an English authority on Egyptian history. 123 : 7. Heimskringla. See note 76 : 10. 123 : 7. Sagas. The sagas are prose accounts of the deeds of ancient Icelandic heroes. The accounts are al- ways vivid and forceful, the events happening mostly be- tween 874 and 1030. 123 : 11. Mount Vernon. The burial place of George Washington some fifteen miles down the Potomac river from Washington. 125 : 18. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan IV, Czar of Russia from 1547-1584. His conquests were accompanied by so many cruelties that he was sumamed The Terrible. 126 : 31. Jenghiz Khan. A Mongolian king who conquered northern China and central Asia 1215-1221. 126 : 4. Touaregs. A powerful tribe inhabiting that portion of the Sahara lying south of Algeria and between Morocco and Senegal. They control the principal caravan routes. 126 : 7. Moslem. The followers of Mohammedism. 126 : 7. Buddhist. A follower of the religious system founded by Buddha in India in the sixth century. 127 : 20. Agincourt. In the battle of Agincourt, October 25, 1415, between the French and the English the skill of the English with the long bow was a decisive factor in the victory. 127 : 21. Alexander. Alexander the Great (356-323 B. C), King of Macedon, pushed his conquests eastward as far as an invasion of India. 127 ; 23. Low-Dutch sea-thieves. The Anglo-Saxon 348 NOTES conquerors of England were from Teutonic tribes living around the mouth of the river Elbe. 127 : 25. Unknown continents. The reference is to the peopling of North America and Australia by the de- scendants of the early Anglo-Saxons. 127 : 25. Hannibal. The Carthaginian general, Han- nibal, carried his conquests up through Spain to the gates of Rome itself. He was defeated by Scipio Africanus in 202. 128 : 9. Memphis. The early capital of Egypt, sit- uated on the Nile, south of Cairo. It continued to exist down to Roman times, but was gradually abandoned and ruined after the Mohanamedan conquest. 128 : 10. Babylon. The capital of ancient Babylonia, situated on the Euphrates, and one of the oldest cities of the East. The famous Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world, seem to have been a building on the roof of which were planted trees, flowers, and shrubs, and are said to have been constructed by Nebuchadnezzar for the gratification of his queen because the level scenery around Babylon was dreary to her in comparison with that of her mountain home in Media. 128 : 11. Nineveh. The capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire. It was situated on the upper Tigris. 128 : 12. Queen Maeve. A famous warrior-queen in the early Irish sagas. 128 : 14. Olaf . One of the most famous of the Nor- wegian Kings (995-1030). 128 : 20. Samurai. The miUtary class in Japan during the prevalence of the feudal system in that country. 128 : 24. Timur the Lame (1333-1405). The Tartar conqueror who became ruler of a great empire embracing NOTES 349 the larger part of Asia. His name is more usually given as Tamburlane. 128 : 25. Gustavus. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632), King of Sweden. 128 : 26. Frederick. Frederick the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia. 128 : 26. Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769- 1821), Emperor of the French, 1804-1814. 129 : 15. Wilderness. This westward expansion of the United States has been vividly portrayed by Roose- velt in The Winning of the West. ADVENTURE Bear Hunting Experiences Roosevelt's ranch life in the 80^s resulted in several books descriptive of his experiences in the Far West, es- pecially on his hunting trips. Among his books in this class is Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1886) from which the selection here given is taken. Other books of the same general character are The Wilderness Huiiter (1887), Ranch Life and Hunting Trail (1888) and American Big Game Hunting (1893). 136 : 4. grisly. Although both the spelling grizzly and grisly are sanctioned, yet the first is the older. It orig- inated from the color of the animal which is usually a griz- zled gray but is very variable, being sometimes whitish, blackish, or brownish. The word grizzled was especially in Ehzabethan days used to denote a grayish color, for example, a grizzled beard (Cf. Hamlet i, 2, 240), and this adjective was applied to this species of bear. The second form of spelling originated in the way suggested by Roose- 350 NOTES velt; that is, it came through association with the ad- jective grisly which was connected with the ferocious dis- position of the animal. Gettestg Christmas Dinner on a Ranch Accompanying the selection from Roosevelt^s hunting books may be placed this little sketch which was reprinted in Everybody's Magazine with a note to the effect that it was written twenty years before and published in a paper of small circulation, which was now defunct. Because it is a vividly written bit of writing in Roosevelt^s best style^ it seems worthy of being more widely known. CITIZENSHIP True Americanism During the earlier part of his political life, Roosevelt wrote several magazine articles and addresses embodying his ideals of citizenship. These he collected in 1897 into a volume with the title American Ideals and Other Essays^ Social and Political. In a subsequent edition he added several of his later discussions of such topics, thus making this volume, together with Addresses and Presidential Ad- dresses, 1902-1 904 y important sources from which may be gathered his ideas on politics and government. As yet his later addresses in this field have not been collected and added to the authorized edition of his works. The essay chosen from American Ideals for inclusion here presents his views upon a topic which has become identified closely with his name because it was the corner- stone of his theory of citizenship. 149 : 3. Johnson. Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) NOTES 351 was the noted English essayist and poet. Boswell in his Life of Johnsorij records this remark about patriotism as follows: ^' Patriotism having become one of our topics, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apothegm, at which many will start: ' Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel/ But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self- interest." 160 : 26. Manchester. A manufacturing city in Eng- land. 152 : 20. Ancient republics of Greece. Ancient Greece was largely a country of individual states each fired with a desire for independence and freedom. The two most prominent were Athens and Sparta. Both of these developed a government by the people, or democracy. 152 : 20. mediaeval republics of Italy. During the Middle Ages, Italy was largely a country of city republics such as Venice, Florence, and Genoa. 152 : 21. petty states of Germany. Until the Con- gress of Vienna in 1815, what is now the German Empire had consisted of thirty-nine independent states. 153 : 16. Harris. See note 6 : 24. 153 : 17. Mark Twain. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), the noted American humorist. 162 : 24. Jay. John Jay (1745-1829) was a distin- guished American lawyer and statesman. 162 : 24. Sevier. John Sevier (1745-1815) was a fa- mous pioneer who participated in the battle of King's Mountain (1779) as the leader of a band of mountain men and who afterwards became Governor of Tennessee. 352 NOTES 162 : 24. Marion. Francis Marion (1732-1795) was a noted American leader in the Revolutionary War. He was known as the Swamp Fox because he made the swamps of South Carolina the rendezvous from which he harassed the British. 162 : 24. Laurens. Henry Laurens (1724-1792) was a South Carolinian prominent in Revolutionary days. 162 : 32. Schuyler. Philip Schuyler (1733-1804) was in command of the expedition into Canada in 1775 and of the forces sent against Burgogne in 1777. After the close of the Revolutionary War, he was for two terms senator from New York. 163 : 1. Van Buren. Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) was the eighth President of the United States (1837-1841). 163 : 12. Miihlenburgs. H. M. Miihlenburg (1711- 1787) was a German- American clergymen who founded the Lutheran Church in the United States. His sons, J. P. G. Miihlenburg, F. A. Miihlenburg, and G. H. E. Miihlenburg, all distinguished themselves as citizens. 163 : 16. Carroll. Charles Carroll (1737-1832) one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence for Mary- land. 163 : 16. Sullivan. John Sullivan (1740-1795) was an American general in Revolutionary times. 163 : 17. Sheridan. Philip Henry Sheridan (1831- 1888) was a prominent general on the Union side in the Civil War. 163 : 17. Shields. General James Shields (1810-1879) served both in the Mexican War and the Civil War. 164 : 22. Samoan trouble. Owing to disturbances in Samoa in 1889, the joint protectorate which England, Ger- many, and the United States had been exercising for NOTES 353 several years was terroinated and the islands partitioned among these three powers. In this connection there was friction between the United States and Germany. The Strenuous Life Another early collection of essays similar to American Ideals was the volume entitled The Strenuous Life (1900). The latter volume took its title from the first essay which had been originally a speech delivered by Roosevelt when he was before the Hamilton Club of Chicago, April 10, 1899. In reprinting the essay in this book, portions of it that dealt particularly with some of the domestic and for- eign problems arising out of the Spanish-American War which had just closed are omitted, but enough is given to show the essential spirit of the address. Our Responsibilities as a Nation When Roosevelt became President in his own right on March 4, 1905, he delivered this brief inaugural address. Short though it is, the reader may find in it the touchstone by which to interpret the foreign and domestic policies of his administration. The Man with the Muck-Rake The occasion of this address was the laying of the corner- stone of the Office Building of the House of Representa- tives, April 14, 1906. Just at that time, criticism was rife in the press, especially on the part of some of the popular magazines, regarding public evils and the actions of those in authority. Roosevelt took this occasion to indicate that there was a difference between legitimate criticism and the exaggeration in which many journals were indulg- 354 NOTES ing. After discussing this topic he passed to the matter of the accountability to the community of those who had accumulated large property. 177 : 2. Capitol. The capitol at Washington was be- gun in 1793 and substantially completed in 1811. 177 : 20. Bunyan's. John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a celebrated English preacher who wrote the prose allegory The Pilgrim's Progress 1678 (second part 1684). The suc- cess of the allegory has come not merely from its exposi- tion of the Protestant theory of the plan of salvation as from the vivid representation of persons and places and the effective narrative. 177 : 21. Man with the Muck-rake^ This character appears in the Second Part of Pilgrim's Progress. The Interpreter conducts Christian into a room " where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck- rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake: but the man did neither look up, nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor.'' 179 : 14. Aristides. A celebrated Athenian statesman and general who lived in the fourth century B. C. 179 : 31. Panama Canal. The building of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama is one of the greatest tan- gible results of Roosevelt's Presidency. For over four hun- dred years there had been discussion of the project and a few attempts at accomplishing it. Roosevelt's interest in the scheme led to the United States beginning the work of constructing the canal in 1904. It was completed in 1914, the cost being approximately $375,000,000. 181 : 19. Crackling of thorns, etc. See Bible, Eccle- NOTES 355 siastes VII, 6. The image is from the Eastern use of thorns for fuel. A fire of such material burns up quickly. In this passage in the Bible it is used as a comparison to show how futile was mirth which was merely frivolous. 182 .11. " Ecclesiastical Polity/' This book was written by the English theologian, Richard Hooker (1553- 1600). The Development of the American Nation This speech delivered at the opening of the Jamestown Exposition is representative of Roosevelt ^s occasional speeches made for various political and social occasions. It contains a significant review of the factors in the de- velopment of the American nation. In this respect it illustrates the truth of the statement made about Roose- velt that, ^^ With him, love of country was based upon complete knowledge. He knew his country^s history as few men know it.^' 189 : 3. celebrating. In 1907, the Jamestown Exposi- tion was held on Hampton Roads, Virginia, in commemo- ration of the three hundredth anniversary of the first per- manent English settlement in America. 189 : 5. first settled. The first permanent settlement of the English was in 1607 at Jamestown, on the banlcs of the James river in Virginia, about thirty-two miles from its mouth. On the site of the settlement, are at present ruins of the fort, a church, and two or three houses. 189 : 17. the Cavalier and the Puritan. See note 94 :24. 196 : 5. Martin Ghuzzlewit. In this novel by Charles Dickens, the portions descriptive of the hero's experiences 356 NOTES in America are Chapters XV-XVII, XXI-XXIII, XXXIII and XXXIV. The description of Eden may be found in Chapters XXI, XXIII, and XXXIII. 196 : 11. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). The seventh President of the United States (1829-1837). 196 : 27. Jefferson. See note 58 : 15. 196 : 28. Marshall. John Marshall (1755-1835) was a celebrated American jurist, who was chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1801-1835). 197 : 19. Grant. See note 2 : 28. 197 : 20. Lee. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) was com- mander-in-chief of the Confederate Army in the Civil War. 199 : 15. Sketch. The reference is to the life of Ed- mund Burke, the English statesman of the eighteenth century, which John Morley, the English statesman and author, wrote in 1879 for the English Men of Letters Series. Conservation of Natural Resources Roosevelt^s name will always be associated with the movement for the conservation of natural resources. All during his Presidential career, this attempt to foster fore- sight and restraint in man^s use of the primary sources of wealth, — the earth^s surface, the forests and waters upon it, and the minerals beneath it, — and to secure their equal enjoyment by the people of this and of future generations received his constant and enthusiastic attention. In 1908, he called a conference of all the state governors and other delegates to consider the conservation of natural resources in all its aspects. To this conference, which met at the White House, May, 1908. Roosevelt delivered the address which is here given. NOTES 357 210 : 27. Pinchot. Gifford Pinchot (1865-) is an American forestry expert who served as Chief of the Forestry Bureau during Roosevelt's administration. The Duties of the Citizen On his way back to the United States after his African expedition, Roosevelt visited several of the European capitals and delivered at each some notable address. One of the most interesting of these addresses was the one here reprinted which was delivered in Paris before a large and representative body of French scholars and other notables. 215 : 12. famous university. The Sorbonne was founded about 1250. 217 : 21. Gamaliel. A famous Jewish rabbi who was the teacher of the Apostle Paul. " To sit at the feet of Gamaliel ^' has become a common expression for being a disciple or learner. 221 : 8. Hotspur. Henry Percy, an English nobleman, who was killed in the battle of Shrewsbury, 1403. His impetuous nature and his fiery temper won for him the nickname Hotspur. Shakespeare gives an engaging pic- ture of him in Henry IV, Part I. 221 : 26. French epic. The Chanson de Roland, 242 : 20. Malbrook. A popular French song beginning " Malbrook has gone to war.^^ The authorship is un- known but the song is supposed to have originated about 1780. Last Words on Americanism It is significant that - Roosevelt^s last message to the American people was upon the theme of Americanism. 358 NOTES He had been invited to speak at a meeting under the auspices of the American Defence Society on the evening of January 5th, 1919. Not being able to attend on ac- count of his health, he wrote and sent the letter here given which was read at the meeting. NATURAL HISTORY My Life as a Naturalist 247 : 19. Audubon. See note 9 : 4. 247 : 20. Waterton. Charles Waterton (1782-1865) was an English naturalist who spent many years in wan- dering about in South America having no other object than the pursuit of natural history. His adventures in South America are graphically described in his Wander- ings in South America J the Northwest of the United States j and the Antilles in 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824. 247 : 22. Brehm. Christian Ludwig Brehm (1787- 1864) was a German ornithologist. 247 : 24. Darwin. See note 76 : 16. 247 : 25. Huxley. See note 76 : 16. 247 : 25. Marsh. Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) was an American zoologist and paleontologist who ac- complished a great amount of valuable scientific work in the discovery of fossil vertebrates in the geological forma- tions of the Western states. 247 : 26. Leidy's. Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) was an American naturalist who made many important contribu- tions to paleontology and other branches of natural science. 248 : 2. Osborn. Henry Fairfield Osborn is a noted American paleontologist. 251 : 20. Merriam. See note 12 : 23. NOTES 359 261 : 20. Burroughs. See note 69 : 16. 261 : 22. Cherrie. One of the scientists sent by the American Museum of Natural History with Roosevelt on the South American trip. 261 : 23. Miller. Another scientist sent by the Amer- ican Museum of Natural History with Roosevelt's South American trip. 251 : 23. Heller. One of Roosevelt's companions on the African trip. 261 : 23. Mearns. Another of Roosevelt's companions on the African trip. 253 : 5. Milwaukee. During the violent campaign of 1912, Roosevelt, while speaking in Milwaukee, was shot by a fanatic just three weeks before the election, but he was not seriously injured. 253 : 14. Agassiz. Alexander Agassiz (1835-1910) was the son of Louis Agassiz and himself a naturalist of dis- tinction, his special interest being marine zoology. 256 : 29. Selous. Frederick C. Selous (1851-) is an English hunter and explorer who has spent much time in South Africa. He has written several books upon his experiences and his observations. 267 : 7. Wallace. Alfred Russel Wallace (1822-1913) was an Enghsh scientist. Simultaneously with Darwin he announced the theory of natural selection which he had arrived at independently. Nature Fakirs One of the surest indications that Roosevelt possessed the spirit of a true naturalist was his impatience with the faulty observations and false deductions of others. Again and again in his writings he insists upon care and accuracy 360 NOTES in observation as well as in the interpretation of observa- tions, even though there may thereby be lost some of the sensational features which a too vivid imagination or a looseness regarding veracity may so easily impart to ac- counts of natural phenomena. As a designation for these unscrupulous'persons, he coined the term ^' nature fakirs '' and voiced his indignation toward them in the magazine article which is here reprinted. 268 : 6. unicorn. A fabulous animal with one horn. 258 : 6. basilisk. A fabulous serpent whose breath, and even its look, was fatal. 258 : 18. Hearne. Samuel Hearne (1745-1792) was an English explorer who between 1769 and 1772 visited many parts of British North America. 260 : 10. Miller. Olive Thorne Miller (1831-), author of several bird books. 260 : 11. J. A. Allen, etc. These are all American naturalists who have written interestingly and accurately about outdoor iue and wild creatures. 261 : 5. roc. A mythical Arabian bird of such im- mense size that it bore off elephants to feed its young. 261 : 5. cockatrice. A fabulous monster believed to have been hatched by a serpent from a cock^s egg, and supposed to possess characteristics of both these animals. Like the basilisk, its breath was believed to be fatal. 261 :32. *' King Solomon's Mines.*' A highly col- ored romance of adventure in the wilds of Africa in quest of Ejng Solomon's Ophir — the country mentioned in Biblical passages such as I Kings IX, 26 and X, 11, whence Solomon received treasures. The exact location of this country is unknown, scholars differing in the conjectures. NOTES aei 262 : 1. Haggard. Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-) is an English novelist. 262 : 14. " Uncle Remus." See note 6 : 25. 262 : 15. " Reynard the Fox." A poem, widely popu- lar in the Middle Ages, in which the characters are ani- mals, the hero being the fox Reynard. 262 : 18. Marcus Aurelius. A celebrated Roman Em- peror living between 121 and 180 A. D. who was greatly devoted to philosophy. His work, ^' The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,^' exhibits his acute, reflective mind. 262 : 22. White Queen. One of the characters in Lewis CarrolFs Through the Looking Glass. 266 : 4. Barnum's. Phinias Taylor Barnum (1810- 1891) was a famous American showman. 266 : 10. Cardiff Giant. In 1868 a rude statue of a man was found buried near Cardiff, New York. It was given out that this was a petrified prehistoric giant. It turned out that the whole matter was a hoax. The Deer of North America As shown in the Autobiography ^ Roosevelt^s ambition in early life was to become a naturalist of the type of Audubon, Wilson, Baird, or Coues — an outdoor student of birds and mammals. The laboratory study of natural science as conducted in the colleges had little interest for him. He preferred the study of the living animal in its habitat to the study of its dead body. He felt that the pursuit of this sort of knowledge might be intimately con- nected with love of the chase and enjoyment of outdoor life without being overshadowed by them and lost sight of. This double purpose he tried to indicate by the title " hunter-naturalist ^' which he was fond of applying to 362 NOTES himself. On his various expeditions he found as keen satisfaction in clearing up even in some slight degree the imperfect life-history of some animal by observations upon its habits as he did in securing trophies of the chase. While Roosevelt himself almost never referred to him- self as a naturalist, yet it may be said that he achieved the goal he set for himself in youth of becoming an out- door naturalist such as Audubon or Wilson or Coues. In 1907 no less authority than Dr. C. Hart Merriam said: '^ Theodore Roosevelt is the world's authority on the big game manmials of North America. His writings are fuller and his observations are more complete and accurate than those of any other man who has given the subject study.'' In 1902, Roosevelt had contributed to a volume entitled The Deer Family several chapters dealing with the deer and antelope of North America as he had studied them in the West. It is from this book that the two selections here included are taken. From them it is easy to discover the qualities that made him an authority in this field. Observations on Concealing Coloration in African Animals As indicated above in the selection ^' My Life as a NaturaUst," one of the scientific problems that espe- cially interested Roosevelt was that of conceahng, or as it is frequently called, protective coloring. The ques- tion at issue was, To what extent does the coloration of an animal, by resembling the background against which it is seen, render it inconspicuous and thereby protect it from its enemies? Some writers on the subject have claimed that all forms of animals are concealingly colored NOTES 363 and that this underlying principle is the explanation of the development of color in the animal kingdom. Roose- velt took issue with so sweeping a generalization, especially as it was presented by G. H. and Abbott H. Thayer in their book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. The extract here given from Roosevelt's paper, '^ Reveal- ing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals '' states his general position as well as indicates the range and accuracy of the observations upon which he based his views, especially in connection with data gathered on his African trip. Animals of Central Brazil 303 : 1. trip. In the winter of 1913-1914, Roosevelt made an exploring and collecting trip through the valley of the Amazon River, — the heart of South America. Such a trip has been suggested to him in the last year of his Presidency by Father Zahm, a Catholic priest who was himself fond of exploration and was acquainted with South America, but for the time being such a trip was put aside for the African trip of 1909-1910. Finding him- self invited to deliver several addresses in South American countries, Roosevelt decided not to return home without exploring the depths of the Brazilian wilderness. The American Museum of Natural History in New York was glad to send two naturalists, George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller, to accompany the expedition. Father Zahm also joined it. Among the others in the party were Roose- velt's son, Kermit, who had been with his father on the African trip, and Anthon}^ Fiala, a former Arctic explorer. The object of the expedition was to secure animal and plant specimens from the central plateau of Brazil, which 364 NOTES lies between the headwaters of the Amazon and Paraguay rivers. After Roosevelt ^s speaking engagements had been ful- filled, the expedition started on December 9, 1913, into the wilds. It was the latter part of April when it emerged into civilization. The achievements were noteworthy not only from a zoological standpoint but also from a geo- graphical. A full and vivid account of it is to be found in Roosevelt^s book Through the Brazilian Wilderness. In lieu of an extract from that book, there is given here a resume of the trip in a lecture delivered before the members of the American Museum of Natural History, December 10, 1914. 303 : 12. Brazilian officers. The Brazilian Govern- ment sent with the Roosevelt expedition Colonel Rondon, a noted army engineer and explorer, and a number of assistants and scientific men. 306 : 15. " Cannibal Fish.'' The piranha. Roose- velt says of this fish in his Through the Brazilian Wilderness: '' South America makes up for its lack, relatively to Africa and India, of large man-eating carnivores by the extraor- dinary ferocity or bloodthirstiness of certain small crea- tures of which the kinsfolk elsewhere are harmless. It is only here that fish no bigger than trout kill swimmers, and bats the size of the ordinary ' flittermice ' of the northern hemisphere drain the life-blood of big beasts and of man himself.'^ 307 : 2. The Unknown River. Roosevelt claimed that he had put on the map an unknown river in length and volume roughly corresponding to the Rhone, the Elbe, or the Rhine. The upper course, he asserted, had never been traversed, although the lower course, he admitted, was NOTES 365 known to a few rubber-men but was not known to ge- ographers. This announcement caused much discussion in scientific circles and learned opinion was divided as to the validity of his claim. However this may be, Roose- velt and several of his party had an exciting and perilous trip down the River of Doubt as they called it. An ac- count of this may be read in Through the Brazilian Wil- derness, Printed in the United States of America HK2i;-8-78 i •^ oV ^°V _ o V ^''o *^ -"^ *" ^f^' Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. * '^'^ * i^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide *> r^'^c^ o rZv yv Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 ^:> *'o.^ PreservationTechnologies o o A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive ,-» Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 O \ (724)779-2111 \ <^. ^^^ ^^^ c ^ N. MANCHESTER.^ INDIANA O o A^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDD113'^bl4a a