\* .. * '•■•' ^ i* W <* .. * *•"' & **%> ^\ &°+ rf" A * v ^ -.c .vV V ^ u+* >:. 4°* ^ - • ■ • " A' *0 4 *<*> THEODORE ROOSEVELT A TRIBUTE But r o thou ttrf way till Ih* r t>A br : iorlbuuthaIlrrU.il. thy lot it th* r - Uyu DANI1 I XII THEODORE ROOSEVELT A TRIBUTE BY WILLIAM HARD PORTLAND MAINE THOMAS BIRD MOSHER MDCCCCXIX M r AM permitted the publication of one of the most beautiful things written, or likely to be written, concerning Theodore Roosevelt. This Tribute, first printed in The New Republic for January 25, 1919, under the title Roosevelt Now, to me, is one of the finer flowers of farewell. It possesses an underlying emotional quality, a restrained fervor, unapproached by any one who has as yet appraised this great leader, not of a Party only but of all Americans in the living Present. " He was of those whose words can shake And riddle, to the very core The falsities that Time will break." T. B. M. A FTER this it was noised abroad that Mr, Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons, by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true : 44 That his pitcher was broken at the fountain." When he understood it, he called for his friends and told them of it. Then said he, I am going to my fathers, and though with great diffi- culty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a wit- ness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went hfl M ith, where ii thy sting ?" Ani nt I ieeper, he -. where "So he pivwi r-. .ind all the trumpets led for him on the other NYAN THEODORE ROOSEVELT October 27, 1858 January 6, 1919 Lrl ui bcilrvr tL»t In thr rfWott o< th* MMdfaf world he hrird thr prnt »a.ti g oa 4 farther thorr. lad fell . upon hit wi»lrd brow the breath a* the eternal marninf . THEODORE ROOSEVELT HE words and ways of the time are gone for him. He spoke them and he trod them. But what was timeless in him was what we loved in him. He was life's lover and life's scorner. He explored it forever and he was forever ready to leave it. He was not simply life's energy. He was not simply, beyond any other living man, life's eternal forthright force. He was the ml curiosity of it and the it and the find- ing of Kreat ma I the per- petual a nt oi it and its laughter. i k thing in it, but its N it aside. Was death tear ful ? ^ n tearful? He s< it and dared it to its instant v. When 1 .'.. he b<>- When he hunted, he hu with hardship. The delving of death, the enduring of pain, the living with \d with bad HU i the h earin g well And the <-*ing well, or .1 as possible it joy. 1 k iid not make life an Life for him was nothing I ngs beyond, openings to effort and ch. and to the joy of effort and B, ioy :ig. So to be with him was not simply to live more strivingly. It was to live more abundantly, A primrose by the river's brim became a prodigious epi- sode in the migration of flowers. A shy child coming into the room became a romp and a riot. A dusty book chanced on in the garret became a gigantic pitiless controversy among scholars past and present and to be. A dead phrase became a political missile. There it lay. There it had always lain. Roosevelt stumbled on it, looked at it, roared, picked it up, hurled it at the right mark and exploded it into fame. Everything became some- thing else. There ceased to be any such thing as the commonplace. There ceased to be any such thing as a solid jungle of plodding fact. Every turn was now, with him, a turn into .1:.. He made I Roosevelt the most interesting thing in the worlj. He seemed to do so. But when one had gone away from him one found that what he kid n done was to make the world itself momentarily immortally interesting. He was the prism through which the light of day took on more colors than J be seen in anybody else's com- pany. Hfan 1 ~<\n remember, and him carry with me in remembr.r But with him are buried a mil gleaming patterns and pageants I now shall never 1 U was instinctive cner. i he was creative curiosity; and he went on then to his greatest greatness. This insatiable taster oi life never fell into the heresy which damns the taster* He knew there were poisons. He set them down from his lips. And he knew the pit in which even the inno- cent but indiscriminate thirst of all life and of all sensation becomes a poison- ous quicksand* He leaped over it. He might have been the greatest dilettante of his day. He might have been, in mind and in body, its greatest dandy. He might have been the most promiscuous absorber of its offerings. He became the most girded pursuer of its activities. He girt himself with choices and denials. The heresy of self-expression as an end. the heresy of self-development as an end. he met and conquered. Having perceived what things make life run on in joy forever, even when the joy of the runner is gone, he chotC tuch things. Thtngs different he left, 1 them, but he left than. He h. genius for the whole of life, but he in even greater for the v.-' With him one seemed to r the world without limit and yet to return without soil. To be sop' i to the very verge of the ultimate human abyss and yet to be as clean as a detfl animal th. nost extraordinary achievement and his :-dinary legacy in the pos- sibilities of the art of living. He '. and lie lived abundantly, he lived ex uberantly, with all his universality, within submissions. He submit!, the continuing life of the individua' of the family and of what is grv than the family. And to that thing he gave his supreme submission* He gave it to the greatest cause he could perceive. He gave it to America. It compelled him in his young years from the labors of the naturalist to the labors of the public man. It furnished him with the one doctrine of his last years* Those last years were* if sad- ness could ever have touched him. sad. They were lonely. But they were lofty. They were his greatest. They were not his greatest intellectually or temperamentally. But. beyond com- pare, they were his greatest morally. In political detail he remained indeed within the pettiness of politics, more so than ever, but in political devotion to what he thought to be essential public moral doctrine he went farther than he had ever before gone, out of the p -npletely into the patriot .uiJ so into the pr Remonstrances came upon him floodingly. He was so full and so open about armies *\nd navies an j With Germany. If he would only abridge, if he would only abate, he Id so much better advance his | and advance himself. He replied with fury. Never by abridgment or a: ment would he b dent again. I he tariff he might have idofl or might liave refused to reform, by circumstance:;. I fere was a thing inces. That Anv should be ready to strike at need that every American should be It to lose himself in the stroke — on those terms, and on those terms only, was he interested m campaigns. He 10 preached universal liability to national survival* He was preaching personal character* No submission, no charac- ter. No limitless loyalty, no man- hood. No loss of self into America, no self. No life militant and at risk, no life triumphant and at joy. Loyalties may change. Submis- sions may shift. Nations may give. way to industries and to groupings of industries. Quarrels between govern- ments may vanish and be replaced by quarrels between syndicates and between classes. National armies and fleets may melt into the armies and fleets of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat. The red soldiers of Lenin may be succeeded by the green or purple soldiers of a greater and a more thorough than Lenin. Yet will the n meaning of Roosevelt be there. W will his virtues be essentia. kind if mankind is not to be the stagnant little v whirlwind of autocratic or demoCJ ■mmunistic or anarchistic or eugCOk adventure Yet will the common man raise himself to self- or perish in his personality .\nd in his sons and daughters. Yd will the causes die which end in self- expression and the pre. s of not dying. Net will the causes live and triumph which elicit from their followers the submis- sion Roosevelt gave to ; I must still dare to count not unworthy, I in tl : great causes — t: of these new hills and these new valleys on which we try anew the experiment of a society to transfuse and to transcend the indubi- table material struggle of class by the indubitable mystical claim of humanity — the cause of America. So he himself still lives. He lives, I may hope, to believe that he did not give its full proper place to the struggle of class. He lives, I may hope, to see that patriotism by itself is sacrilegious because it rends the body of Christ and tears His seamless coat. I may hope. But plainly I see him striding on and beating the mist back with swinging elbows; and in the space beyond is the gravity of Washington and the fierceness of Jackson and the melancholy of Lincoln and all the riches of men in which we Americans are already so rich ; and he turns his 13 heid on hJi ihouldcrj tod be looks .j I cam l heat him s^v :. hoar the thing that mark and the symbol <>f bJ ing : I cau hear the click of teeth with which 1 elf to all 6t of things in himself th. ill conquest in himself of things beyond; and I can hear him laugh. And to the gravity of Washington he fierceness of Jackson and the melancholy of Lincoln 1 I .: the time of Roosevelt. 'T v HOU'RT dead of dying, and art made divine; ■*■ Nor need'st thou fear to change or life or will ; Wherefore my soul well-nigh doth envy thine. Fortune and time across thy threshold still Shall dare not pass, the which mid us below Bring doubtful joyance blent with certain ill. Clouds are there none to dim for thee Heaven's glow ; The measured hours compel not thee at all ; Chance or necessity thou canst not know. Thy splendour wanes not when our night doth fall, Nor waxes with day's light however clear, Nor when our suns the season's warmth recall. MICHAEL ANGELO '{Translated by J. A. Symonds.) W ' \ FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON VAN GELDER HAND-MADE PAPER FOR THOMAS BIRD MOSHER PORTLAND MAINE MDCCCCXDC »^*£te ' A y»* \* ■>Spv .►♦ *♦ .' ' ■ ■v. *o* ♦ .« *o, *••»• A <^ ♦ •i^^fe ,0* »•■£!♦ *o, 4> •iLT%^ "W » ^ £ *W^« ^ A* W +«&