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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
to how best to study American History, thinking perhaps that I might
go to Columbia College or something of that kind.
I began my effort for information by saying: “Theodore, I really
know very little about American history.” I can see the flash in his
eyes as he turned to me. “What do you mean?” he said; “it’s
disgraceful for any woman not to know the history of her own
country.” “I know it is,” I replied, “and that is just why I am
consulting you about it. I know you feel I ought to know all about
American history, but I also know that you preach large families, and
you must remember that I have done my best in that direction in
these last five years, and now I am ready to study American
history!” “Do you mean really to study?” he said, looking at me
sternly. “Just as really to study as whooping-cough, measles,
chicken-pox, and other family pleasures will allow,” I said. “Well,” he
replied, still sternly, and not laughing at my sally, “if you really mean
to study, I will teach you myself. I will come at nine o’clock every
week on Tuesday and Friday for one hour, if you will be ready
promptly and give me all your attention.” Needless to say, I was
enchanted at the thought, and, true to his word, the busy man came
at nine o’clock every Tuesday and Friday for several months, and in
my library at 422 Madison Avenue I was ready with note-book and
blackboard, and he lectured to me for that hour twice a week as if I
were a matriculating class at Harvard College. I have now many of
the notes he made for me at that time, and I shall always remember
the painstaking way in which he drew the battle-fields, and
explained how “one commander came up in this position at just the
right moment and saved the day,” or how the lack of preparedness
ruined many a courageous adventure. These quiet hours come back
to me with a rush of recollection as I write, and I am proud to think
that he felt it was worth while to give me such instruction. Once I
said to him: “How can you do this, Theodore; how can you take the
time to study for these lectures?” “Oh!” he said, “I do not have to
study; I could not, of course, give quite as much time as that. You
see, I just happen to know my American history.” He certainly did
“happen to know” his American history, as was proved in many a
controversy later in his life. His American history and, indeed, the
history of almost every other country of the world were all at his
finger-tips.
During his civil service commissionership, a period of a number
of years, the letters were few and far between, but I have one dated
July 28, 1889, in which he writes: “Struggle as I will, my life seems
to grow more and more sedentary, and as for my polo, it is one of
the things that has been; witness the enclosed check which is for
Cranford, and I am trying to sell Diamond too;—how I hate to give it
up! We have had lovely days this summer, however, at Sagamore. I
took all the children down on the pond once, and made them walk
out on a half-sunken log, where they perched like so many sand-
snipes. I am leaving for the West soon to have a whack at the bears
in the Rockies; I am so out of training that I look forward with acute
physical terror to going up the first mountain. [He seems for the
moment to have forgotten that his life was growing very
“sedentary.”] I have mortally hated being so much away from home
this summer, but I am very glad I took the place [civil service
commissionership] and I have really enjoyed my work. I feel it
incumbent on me to try to amount to something, either in politics or
literature because I have deliberately given up the idea of going into
a money-making business. Of course, however, my political life is but
an interlude—it is quite impossible to continue long to do much
between two sets of such kittle-kattle as the spoilsmen and the
mugwumps.”
The seed of the birth of the Progressive party of 1912 was sown
by that feeling of Theodore Roosevelt of the difficulty to do much
“between two sets such as the spoilsmen and the mugwumps.” The
honest effort to play honest politics for honest purposes and
practical ideals was the stimulating idea translated into action in that
great attempt for better government called the Progressive party;
but this letter of the young Civil Service Commissioner was written in
1889, and it was not until twenty-three years later that the seed
fructified into a movement which, had it succeeded, would, I verily
believe, have changed the fate of the world.
 But to return to the Civil Service Commission. He gave faithful
effort and all his intelligence to the improvement of that important
service, and often had the sensation, which he was doomed to have
in so many of his positions, that he was more or less beating his
head against the wall. He sent me at that time a copy of a letter to
the Civil Service Commissioners from an applicant who had been
summoned to an examination and had not appeared. To show the
ignorance of some of the applicants, I cannot resist quoting from the
letter.

Alabama Mobile October 6, 1890.

To the Comishers of Sivel Serves,
My dear brothers: I am very sorry that I could not Meet
you on the day you said but gentlemen, i am glad of the
cause that kept me away. Let me tell you Mr. Comisher, i hav
bin mard five years antel the Other Da me and my wife hav
bin the onley mbrs en ow Famly. Well Sir on the Da before
youre examnenashun My Wife Had a Kupple ov tuins, gest
think of it, Mr. Comischer—and of course i couddnt go off and
Leave her and them. i just staid home and we had a
sellabration—and i invited all my friends to dinner. i wish you
had been thare. i Hope i can be thare next time Mr.
Comischer.
Very truly yours.

I remember my brother saying humorously that, after all, that

particular gentleman might just as well have stayed away with his
“tuins” and “sellabration,” as he really doubted whether he could
have passed the “examnenashun” had he appeared!
 VI

THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING

IT IN YELLOWSTONE PARK

From the cloistered life of American college boys,

sheltered from the ruder currents of the world by the
ramparts of wealth and gentle nurture, he passed, still very
young, to the wild and free existence of the plains and the
hills. In the silence of those vast solitudes men grow to full
stature, when the original stuff is good. He came back to the
East, bringing with him, as Tennyson sang, “The wrestling
thews that throw the world.” —From a speech by John
Hay.

O lover of the things God made—

Hill, valley, mountain, plain:
The lightning from the darkened cloud,
The storm-burst with its rain.
—Roosevelt, “Hymn of Molokai.”

M
y brother has written so much about his own ranch, and has
given so vivid a description in his autobiography of the life
led there, of the wonderful stretches of the Bad Lands, of
the swaying cottonwood-trees, and the big fireplace in the Elkhorn
Ranch sitting-room, around which he and his fellow ranchers
gathered, exhausted by a long day’s cattle-herding or deer-hunting,
that it hardly seems possible that I can add much to the picture
already painted by his own facile hand: ranch life, however, viewed
from the standpoint of the outsider or from that of the insider has a
different quality, and thus no reminiscences of mine would be in any
way complete were I not to describe my first delightful visit paid to
Medora, Dakota, and the surrounding country, in 1890. Our party
consisted of my brother and sister-in-law, my sister Mrs. Cowles,
then Anna Roosevelt, our friend Robert Munro Ferguson, my
husband and myself, and young George Cabot Lodge. The latter was
the sixteen-year-old son of our valued friend Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge, and was truly the “gifted son of a gifted father,” for later he
was not only to earn fame as a poet, well known to his countrymen,
but in his brief life—for alas! he died in the summer of 1909—his
talents were recognized in other lands as well.

I had been prepared by many tales for the charm and freedom
and informal ease of life in the Bad Lands, and had often dreamed of
going there; but, unlike most dreams, this one came true in an even
more enchanting fashion than I had dared hope. Many had been the
letters that my brother had written to me from Elkhorn Ranch
several years previous to our journey. In June, 1886, he wrote: “I
have never once had breakfast as late as four o’clock. Have been in
the saddle all day, and have worked like a beaver, and am as rugged
and happy as possible. While I do not see any very great future
ahead, yet, if things go on as they are now going and have gone for
the past three years, I think that each year I will net enough money
to pay a good interest on the capital, and yet be adding slowly to my
herd all the time. I think I have more than my capital on the ground,
and this year I ought to be able to sell between two and three
hundred head of steer and dry stock. I wish I could see all of you,
but I certainly do enjoy the life. The other day while dining at the de
Mores I had some cherries, the only fruit I have had since I left New
York. I have lived pretty roughly.”
I quote the above simply to show, what is not always
understood, that my brother’s ranching venture was, from his
standpoint, a perfectly just business enterprise, and, had not the
extraordinarily severe winters intervened, his capital would not have
been impaired. Writing that same summer, shortly after hearing of
the birth of my baby girl, he says in his loving way:
“My own darling Pussie, my sweetest little sister: How can I tell
you the joy I felt when I received Douglas’ first telegram; but I had
not the heart to write you until I received the second the good old
boy sent me, and knew you were all right. Just to think of there
being a second wee, new Pussie in this big world! How I shall love to
pet and prize the little thing! It will be very, very dear to Uncle
Teddy’s heart, which is quite large enough, however, not to lose an
atom of affection for Teddy Douglas, the blessed little scamp. I have
thought of you all the time for the last few weeks, and you can
hardly imagine how overjoyed and relieved I felt, my own darling
sister. I hope the little new Pussie will grow up like her dear mother,
and that she will have many many loving ones as fond of her as her
irrelevant old cowboy uncle is of Pussie, Senior. Will you be very
much offended if I ask whether she now looks like a little sparsely-
haired, pink polyp? My own offspring, when in tender youth, closely
resembled a trilobite of pulpy consistency and shadowy outline. You
dearest Pussie,—you know I am just teasing you, and how proud
and fond I am of the little thing even when I have never seen it. I
wish I was where I could shake old Douglas by the hand and kiss
you again and again.
“Today I went down to Dickerman to make the Fourth of July
speech to a great crowd of cowboys and rangers, and after, stayed
to see the horse races between the cowboys and Indians.”
In another letter about the same time: “If I was not afraid of
being put down as cold-blooded, I should say that I honestly miss
greatly and all the time, and think lovingly of all you dear ones, yet I
really enjoy this life. I have managed to combine an outdoor life
possessing much variety and excitement, and now and then a little
adventure, with a literary life also. Three out of four days I spend
the morning and evening in the Ranch house writing, and working at
various pieces of writing I have now on hand. They may come to
nothing, however; but on the other hand they may succeed; at any
rate, I am doing some honest work whatever the result is and I am
really pretty philosophical about success or failure now. It often
amuses me when I indirectly hear that I am supposed to be
harboring secret and bitter regret for my political career, when, as a
matter of fact, I have hardly ever, when alone, given two thoughts to
it since it closed, and have been quite as much wrapped up in
hunting, ranching, and book-making as I ever was in Politics. Give
my best love to wee Teddy and dear old Douglas; do you know, I
have an excessively warm feeling for your respected spouse. I have
always admired Truth, Loyalty, and Courage; and though I am really
having a lovely life, just the life I care for, please be sure that I am
always thinking of my own, darling sister, whom I love so much and
so tenderly. Ever your affectionate brother, Thee.”
On August 7 of the same year he wrote again after having paid a
brief visit to the East, and returned to Dakota: “Blessed little Pussie;
Mother of an increasing and vocal Israel, I did enjoy my two visits to
my dear sister, and that dear old piece of peripatetic bric-à-brac, her
Caledonian spouse. Everything here is much as usual. The boys
were, as always, genuinely glad to see me. I am greatly attached to
the Ranch and the life out here, and am really fond of the men. It is
in many ways ideal; we are so very rarely able to, actually and in
real life, dwell in our ideal ‘hero land.’ The loneliness and freedom,
and the half-adventurous nature of existence out here, appeals to
me very powerfully.... Merrifield and I are now busily planning our
hunt in the mountains.”
Such letters as the above filled the members of his family with a
strong desire to participate to some degree, at least, in the life which
he loved so dearly; but the births of various small members of the
family rendered such participation impossible until the late summer
of 1890.
After a brief visit to St. Paul, Minn., we took train for Medora. My
brother had heralded the fact that I (then a young woman of
twenty-eight) was a mighty rider (I had followed the Essex County
hounds in New Jersey)! And the cowboys were quite sure, I think,
that I would leap from the locomotive to the back of a bucking
bronco. Our train drew up, or I should say, approximately drew up,
to the little station at Medora at four o’clock in the morning, in one
of the most frightful storms that I ever remember. Rain fell in
torrents, and we had to get out on an embankment composed of
such slippery mud that before we actually plodded to the station,
our feet and legs were encased in glutinous slime; but the calls of
the cowboys undauntedly rang out in the darkness, and the neighing
of horses and prancing of hoofs made us realize that civilization as
well as convention was a thing of the past. Will Merrifield, the
superintendent of Elkhorn Ranch, and Sylvane Ferris, his able
lieutenant, fully expected me to mount the extremely dangerous-
looking little animal which they held by a loose rope, and they were
inordinately disappointed when I pleaded the fatigue of two nights
on the train, and begged that I might drive with the other less-
adventurous ladies to the ranch-house, forty miles away. Before
starting on this long trip we were entertained by Joe Ferris, the
brother of Sylvane, who having once also been one of Theodore’s
cowboys, had now decided upon a more sober type of life as
storekeeper in the little town of Medora. Joe and his wife were most
hospitable, and above his shop in their own rooms we were given a
nice warm breakfast and an equally warm welcome. After breakfast,
we came down to the shop, where our luggage had already been
gathered, and there we began to sort what we would take to the
Ranch and what we would leave. This required a certain amount of
packing and unpacking, and I was on my knees “madly thrusting,” as
“Alice in Wonderland” puts it, “a right-hand foot into a left-hand
shoe” when Joe came up to me and said: “Mrs. Douglas (they all
decided to call me Mrs. Douglas, as more informal than Mrs.
Robinson), it ain’t worth while for you to tire yourself like that when
the best packer in all Dakota is standin’ in the doorway.” I looked up
and sure enough a huge man, who might have just walked out of
one of Bret Harte’s novels, was “standin’ in the doorway.” “There he
is,” continued Joe; “that’s Hell-Roarin’ Bill, the sheriff of the county;
you heard tell of how he caught that lunatic; well, Bill’s the best
ladies’ packer that ever was, and you had better leave all your bags
to him to arrange.” Fearing that “Bill” might be offended if I did not
use him in the capacity of a French maid, and having frequently
been told of the rapid results of hurt feelings on the part of “Bill,” I
suavely called him to my side, and telling him of the wonderful
reputation which I had heard he enjoyed, I immediately put my
wardrobe in his care, and to my infinite surprise the huge
backwoodsman measured up to his reputation. Very soon the
cavalcade was ready, the rain had ceased to fall in such torrents, the
half-misty quality in the air lent a softer beauty to the arid
landscape, and a sense of adventure was the finishing touch to our
expectations as we started for Elkhorn Ranch. My disappointed
friends, Merrifield and Sylvane, said that “they did not believe that
Mrs. Douglas would like drivin’ with a ‘shotgun team’ much better
than ridin’ a buckin’ bronco, but, of course, if she thought she
wanted to go that way, she could.” An hour later “Mrs. Douglas”
somewhat regretted her choice of progression; true enough, it was a
shotgun team attached to that springless wagon in which we sat!
The horses had never been hitched up together before, and their
methods of motion were entirely at odds. The cowboy driver,
however, managed eventually to get them started, and from that
moment our progress, though irrelevant, was rapid beyond words.
We forded the “Little Missouri” River twenty-three times on the
way to the ranch-house, and as the banks of the river were
extremely steep, it was always a question as to whether we could go
fast enough down one bank to get sufficient impetus to enable us to
go through the river and up the very steep bank on the other side;
so that either coming or going we were in imminent danger of a
complete somersault. However, we did accomplish that long,
exhausting, springless drive, and gradually the buttes rose higher
and higher around us, the strange formation of the Bad Lands,
curious in color, became more and more marked, the cottonwood-
trees more plentiful as the river broadened out, and suddenly we
saw buried amidst the trees on the farther side of one of our
fordings the substantially built, cosey-looking house called by my
brother the Elkhorn Ranch.
In a letter written to my aunt, Mrs. Gracie, from the ranch-house
I say:
“We are having the most delightful time at the Ranch. The little
house is most cosey and comfortable, and Mrs. Merrifield had
everything so neat and sweet for us, and as she has a girl to help
her, we really do not have to rough it at all. We all make our beds
and do up our rooms religiously, but even that they would willingly
do for us if we would let them. We have had three cloudless days,
the first of which was occupied in driving the forty miles down here,
and a beautiful picturesque drive it is, winding in and out through
these strange, bold Buttes, crossing the ‘Little Missouri’ twenty-three
times! We ladies drove, but the men all rode, and very picturesque
they looked filing across the river. We arrived at the Ranch house at
twelve o’clock and ate a splendid dinner of Mrs. Merrifield’s
preparing, immediately after which we climbed up a Butte and
walked to Prairie Dog town and saw the little prairie dogs. We then
mounted horses and took a lovely ride, so you may imagine that we
slept well.
“The next day we were all on horseback soon after breakfast,
Ferris and Merrifield with us, and off we rode; this time with the
intention of seeing Merrifield lasso a steer. When we came to a great
bunch of cattle, the practised eyes of the two men at once
discovered an unbranded heifer, which they immediately decided to
lasso and brand. It was very exciting. Merrifield threw the rope,
cleverly catching its legs, and then threw the heifer, which was
almost the size of a cow, and then Ferris tied another rope around
its neck. The ends of the ropes were slipped over the pommels of
two ponies who, in the most sensible way, held the heifer while the
two men built a little fire and heated the cinch ring with which they
branded the creature. It was all intensely picturesque. In the
afternoon, we again rode out to be with the men while they drove
the deer on the bottom, and Merrifield shot one; so you see, we
have had very typical experiences, especially at the round-up
yesterday.”
Happy days, indeed, they were, full of varied excitements.
Merrifield’s little boy, Frank, only eleven years old, was the chief
factor in finding the herd of ponies in the morning, for it was the
custom to let them loose after twilight. Many and many a time I
would hear him unslip the halter of the one small pony (“Little Moke”
by name) which was still tied to the ranch-house steps and on which
he would leap in the early dawn to go to round up the ponies for the
day’s work. I would jump up and look out of the ranch window, and
see the independent little fellow fording the river, starting on his
quest, and an hour or so later the splashing of many feet in the
water heralded the approach of “Little Moke,” his young rider, and
the whole bunch of four-legged friends.
The relationship between my brother and his men was one of
honest comradeship but of absolute respect, each for the other, and
on the part of the cowboys there was, as well, toward their “Boss,” a
certain reverential attitude in spite of the “man to man” equality.
How I loved that first night that we sat around the fire, when the
men, in their effort to give my brother all the news of the vicinity
during his absence, told the type of tale which has had its equivalent
only in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” “There is a sky-pilot a good
many miles from here, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Sylvane, “who’s bringin’ a
suit against you.” Sylvane announced this unpleasant fact with
careless gaiety, stretching his long legs toward the fire. No one was
ever so typically the ideal cowboy of one’s wildest fancy as was
Sylvane Ferris. Tall and slender, with strong fair hair and blue eyes of
an almost unnatural clearness, and a splendid broad brow and
aquiline nose, Sylvane looked the part. His leather chaps, his broad
sombrero hat, his red handkerchief knotted carelessly around his
strong, young, sunburned throat, all made him such a picture that
one’s eye invariably followed him as he rode a vicious pony,
“wrastled” a calf, roped a steer, or branded a heifer; but now sitting
lazily by the fire, such activities seemed a thing of the past, and
Sylvane was ready for an hour’s gossip.
 “A sky-pilot? Why should a sky-pilot bring suit against me?” said
my brother laughingly. [In telling this story he sometimes referred to
this man as a professor.]
“Well,” said Sylvane, “it was this way, Mr. Roosevelt. You see, we
was all outside the ranch door when up drives the sky-pilot in a
buggy. He was one of them wanderin’ ones that thought he could
preach as he wandered, and just about as he drove up in front of
our ranch his horse went dead lame on him and his old buggy just
fell to pieces. He was in a bad fix, and he said he knew you never
would let him be held up like that, because he had heard you was a
good man too, and wouldn’t we lend him a horse, or send him with
the team to the next place he was going to, some forty miles away.
We felt we had to be hospitable-like, with you so far away and the
sky-pilot in such a fix, so we said ‘Yes,’ we would send him to where
he wanted to go, and there he is now, lyin’ in a hut with one leg
broken and one arm nearly wrenched off his body, and he’s bringin’
suit against you, which ain’t really fair, we think.”
“What do you mean, Sylvane; what have I got to do with his
broken leg and arm?” said my brother, beginning to feel a trifle
nervous.
“Well, you see, it is this way,” said Sylvane; “he says we sent him
to where he is with a runaway team and he was thrown out and
broken up in pieces-like; but we says how could that team we sent
him with be a runaway team—how could a team be called a
runaway team when one of the horses ain’t never been hitched up
before, and the other ain’t run away not more’n two or three times;
but I guess sky-pilots are always unreasonable!”
This conclusion seemed to satisfy Sylvane entirely; the
unfortunate condition of the much-battered sky-pilot aroused no
sympathy in his adamantine heart, nor did he feel that the sky-pilot
had the slightest cause for his suit, which later was settled in a
satisfactory manner, but the conversation was typical of that
evening’s ranch news by the big wood-fire.
 Our day at the round-up was one of the most fascinating days of
my life, and I was proud to see that my city-bred brother was as
agile and as active in the duties of rounding up the great steers of
the plains as were the men brought up from their babyhood to such
activities. We lunched at midday with the roundup wagon; rough life,
indeed, but wonderfully invigorating, and as we returned in the
evening, galloping over the grassy plateaus of the high buttes, I
realized fully that the bridle-path would never again have for me the
charm it once had had. Nothing in the way of riding has ever been
so enchanting, and the curious formation of the Bad Lands,
picturesque, indeed, almost grotesque in line, in conjunction with
the wonderful climate of that period of the year and the mingling of
tints in the sunset sky, resulted in a quality of color and atmosphere
the like of which I only remember in Egypt, and made as lasting an
impression upon my memory as did the land of the Nile.
During our stay, my original failure to leap, on my arrival, “from
the locomotive to the back of a bucking bronco” had more or less
been effaced from the memory of the cowboys by subsequent
adventures, and the last day that we spent under the cottonwood-
trees, by the banks of the Little Missouri, was made significant by
the “surprise” gotten up by Merrifield and Sylvane for the special
edification of my brother and husband. The surprise took the form of
the “wrastling” of a calf by no less a person than myself! Merrifield
had taught me to rope an animal, Sylvane had shown me with
praiseworthy regularity the method of throwing a calf, and the great
occasion was heralded amongst the other members of the party by
an invitation to sit on the fence of the corral at three o’clock, the last
afternoon of our visit to Elkhorn, and thus witness the struggle
between a young woman of the East and a bovine denizen of the
Western prairies. The corral, a plot of very muddy ground (having
been watered by a severe rain the night before), was walled in by a
fence, and generally used when we wished to keep the ponies from
straying. On this occasion, however, it was emptied of all but the
calf, which was to be the object of my efforts and prowess. I was
then introduced by Merrifield, very much as the circus rider used to
be introduced in the early Barnum and Bailey days; then followed a
most gruelling pantomime; the calf, which was of an unusually
unpleasant size, galloped around the corral and I, knee-deep in
mud, galloped after it, and finally succeeded in achieving the first
necessity, which was to rope it around the neck. After that, the
method of procedure was as follows: The “wrastler”—on this
occasion my unfortunate self—was supposed to get close enough to
the animal in question to throw himself or herself across the back of
the galloping calf, with the purpose of catching the left leg of the
animal, the leg, in fact, farthest away from one’s right arm. If this
deed could be accomplished and the leg forcibly bent under the calf,
both calf and rider would go down in an inextricable heap, and the
“wrastling” of the calf would be complete.
I can feel now the mud in my boots as I floundered with
agonized effort after that energetic animal. I can still sense the
strain in every nerve of my body as I finally flung myself across its
back, and still, also, as if it were only yesterday, do I remember the
jellied sensation within me, as for some torturing minutes I lay
across the heifer’s spine, before, by a final Herculean effort, I caught
that left leg with my right arm. The cries of “stay with him!” from the
fence, the loud hand-clapping of the enthusiastic cowboys, the
shrieks of laughter of my brother and my husband, all still ring in my
ears, and when the deed was finally accomplished, when the calf,
with one terrible lurch, actually “wrastled,” so to speak, fell over on
its head in the mud, all sensation left me and I only remember being
lifted up, bruised and encased in an armor of oozing dirt, and being
carried triumphantly on the shoulders of the cowboys into the ranch-
house, having redeemed, in their opinion, at least, the reputation
which my brother had given me before I visited the Bad Lands.
Years later, when the young owner of Elkhorn Ranch had
reached the higher estate of President of the United States, I, as the
sister of the President, was receiving with my sister-in-law at the
breakfast in the White House, at his Inaugural in 1905, and was
attired in my best black velvet gown and “presidential sister” white
plumes; I was surrounded by senators and ambassadors, when
suddenly, coming toward me, I recognized the lithe figure of my
brother’s quondam cowboy, Will Merrifield. He, too, had climbed the
rungs of the ladder of fame, and now, as marshal of Montana, he
had been intrusted by the State of Montana with the greetings of
that state for the newly inaugurated President. Coming toward me
with a gay smile of recognition, he shook me warmly by the hand
and said: “Well, now, Mrs. Douglas, it’s a sight for sore eyes to see
you again; why, almost the last time I laid eyes on you, you were
standing on your head in that muddy corral with your legs waving in
the air.” Senators and ambassadors seemed somewhat surprised, but
Will Merrifield and the President’s sister shook hands gaily together,
and reminisced over one of the latter’s most thrilling life victories.
But to return to our farewell to Elkhorn Ranch in 1890.

* * * * *
The three weeks’ visit to the ranch-house had passed on fleet
wings, and it was a very sad little party that turned its face toward
Medora again, in preparation for the specially planned trip to
Yellowstone Park. Theodore Roosevelt, as one may well imagine,
was making a very real concession to family affection by arranging
this trip for us and accompanying us upon it. What he loved was
roughing it; near-roughing it was not his “métier,” nor, frankly, was it
his “métier” to arrange a comfortable trip of any kind. He loved wild
places and wild companions, hard tramps and thrilling adventure,
and to be a part of the type of trip which women who were not
accustomed to actual hunting could take, was really an act of
unselfishness on his part. We paid huge sums for no comforts, and
although supposed to go—as we were riding—where the ordinary
travellers in stage-coach could not go in Yellowstone Park, yet there
were times when we seemed to be constantly camping in the vicinity
of tomato cans!
I write again to my aunt two weeks after we start our
Yellowstone experiences:
 “We have had a most delightful two weeks’ camping and have
enjoyed every moment. The weather has been cloudless, and
though the nights were cold, we were only really uncomfortable one
night. We were all in the best of health and the best of spirits, and
ate without a murmur the strange meals of ham, tomatoes, greasy
cakes and coffee prepared by our irresistible Chinese cook. Breakfast
and dinner were always the same, and lunch was generally bread
and cheese carried in our pockets and eaten by the wayside. We
have really had great comfort, however, and have enjoyed the
pretense of roughing it and the delicious, free, open-air life hugely,—
and such scenery! Nothing in my estimation can equal in unique
beauty the Yellowstone canyon, the wonderful shapes of the rocks,
some like peaks and turrets, others broken in strange fantastic jags,
and then the marvellous colors of them all. Pale greens and yellows,
vivid reds and orange, salmon pinks and every shade of brown are
strewn with a lavish hand over the whole Canyon,—and the beautiful
Falls are so foamy and white, and leap with such exultation from
their rocky ledge 360 feet down.
“We had one really exciting ride. We had undertaken too long an
expedition, namely, the ascent of Mt. Washburn, and then to Towers’
Falls in one day, during which, to add to the complications, Edith had
been thrown and quite badly bruised. We found ourselves at Towers’
Falls at six o’clock in the evening instead of at lunch time, and
realized we were still sixteen miles from Camp, and a narrow trail
only to lead us back, a trail of which our guide was not perfectly
sure. We galloped as long as there was light, but the sun soon set
over the wonderful mountains, and although there was a little
crescent moon, still, it soon grew very dark and we had to keep
close behind each other, single file, and go very carefully as the trail
lay along the mountainside. Often we had to traverse dark woods
and trust entirely to the horses, who behaved beautifully and
stepped carefully over the fallen logs. Twice, Dodge, our guide, lost
the trail, and it gave one a very eerie feeling, but he found it again
and on we went. Once at about 11 P. M., Theodore suggested
stopping and making a great fire, and waiting until daylight to go on,
for he was afraid that we would be tired out, but we all preferred to
continue, and about 11:30, to our great joy, we heard the roar of
the Falls and suddenly came out on the deep Canyon, looking very
wonderful and mysterious in the dim starlight. We reached our Camp
after twelve o’clock, having been fifteen hours away from it, thirteen
and a half of which we had been in the saddle. It was really an
experience.”
It was a hazardous ride and I did not terrify my aunt by some of
the incidents such as the severe discomfort suffered by Mrs.
Theodore Roosevelt when she was thrown and narrowly escaped a
broken back, and when a few hours later my own horse sank in a
quicksand and barely recovered himself in time to struggle to terra
firma again, not to mention the dangers of the utter darkness when
the small, dim crescent moon faded from the horizon. My brother
was the real leader of the cavalcade, for the guide, Ira Dodge,
proved singularly incompetent. Theodore kept up our flagging
spirits, exhausted as we were by the long rough day in the saddle,
and although furious with Dodge because of his ignorance of the
trail through which he was supposed to guide us, he still gave us the
sense of confidence, which is one’s only hope on such an adventure.
Looking back over that camping trip in the Yellowstone, the
prominent figure of the whole holiday was, of course, my brother. He
was a boy in his tricks and teasing, crawling under the tent flaps at
night, pretending to be the unexpected bear which we always
dreaded. He was a real inspiration in his knowledge of the fauna and
birds of the vicinity and his willingness to give us the benefit of that
knowledge.
I find in my diary of that excursion a catalogue of the birds and
other animals which he himself had pointed out to me, making me
marvel again at the rapid observation which he had made part of his
physical equipment. I note: “During the first four days we have been
in the Park, we have seen chipmunk, red squirrel, little black bear,
elk watering with the horses, muskrat in the streams, golden eagle,
Peregrine falcon and other varieties, red-tailed hawk and pigeon
hawk, Clark’s crow, Canada jay, raven, bittern, Canada goose,
mallard and teal ducks, chicadee, nuthatch, dwarf-thrush, robin,
water oozel, sunbird, longspur, grass finch, yellow-crowned warbler,
Rocky Mountain white-throated sparrow, song-sparrow, and wren.”
Each one of the above I saw with the eyes of Theodore
Roosevelt, and can still hear the tones of his voice as he described
to me their habits of life and the differences between them and
others of their kind. To him this trip must, of necessity, have been
somewhat dull, based as it was upon the companionship of three
women who were not hunters; but never once during those weeks
did he seem anything but happy, and as far as we were concerned,
to see the beauties of nature through those ardent eyes, to hear the
bird-notes through those ears, attuned to each song, and to listen
constantly to his stories of wood and plain, his interpretation of the
lives of those mighty pioneer men of the West—all of this comes
back to me, as a rare experience which I have gladly stored away in
what Emerson calls “the amber of memory.” How we laughed over
the strange rules and regulations of the park! Fierce bears were
trapped, but could not be killed without the kind permission of one
of the secretaries in Washington, the correspondence on the subject
affording my brother infinite amusement. His methods under like
circumstances would have been so very different!
The experiences at Elkhorn Ranch and again in the Yellowstone
Park were of special benefit to me from the standpoint of the
comprehension which they gave me of the absolute sympathy which
my brother felt both with the nature and the human nature of the
great West. No period of the life of Theodore Roosevelt seems to me
quite as important, in the influence which it was to bear upon his
future usefulness to his country, as was that period in which, as man
to man, he shared the vigorous work and pastimes of the men of
that part of our country. Had he not actually lived the life not only of
the hunter and cattleman, but had he not taken actual part as sheriff
in the methods of government of that part of our country, he would
never have been able to interpret the spirit of the West as he did. He
would never have been recognized as such an interpreter, and when
the time came that America could no longer look from an
uninterested distance at the Spanish iniquities in Cuba, the fact that
Theodore Roosevelt had become so prominent a figure in the West
proved the essential factor in the flocking to his standard of that
mass of virile manhood which, under his leadership, and that of the
then army doctor, Leonard Wood, became the picturesque, well-
known “Rough Rider” Volunteer Cavalry of the Spanish-American
War.
At Elkhorn Ranch, also, the long silences and stretches of
solitude had much to do with the mental growth of the young man.
There he read and wrote and thought deeply. His old guide Bill
Sewall was asked not long since about his opinion of my brother as a
religious man. His answer was as follows: “I think he read the Bible
a great deal. I never saw him in formal prayer, but as prayer is the
desire of the heart, I think he prayed without ceasing, for the desire
of his heart was always to do right.” Thus, sharing the hardships and
the joys of their primitive life with his comrades of the West, the
young rancher became an integral part of that country, which never
failed to rouse in him the spirit of high adventure and romance.
Theodore Roosevelt, himself, in a letter to John Hay, written long
after our visit to his ranch and our gay excursion to the Yellowstone,
describes the men of that part of the world. He was taking an
extended trip, as President, in 1903, on the first part of which
journey Mr. Hay had accompanied him, and at Oyster Bay, on his
return, he writes to his secretary of state in order to give him further
details of the trip:
“From Washington, I turned southward, and when I struck
northern Montana, again came to my old stamping grounds and
among my old friends. I met all kinds of queer characters with whom
I had hunted and worked and slept and sometimes fought. From
Helena, I went southward to Butte, reaching that city in the
afternoon of May 27th. By this time, Seth Bullock had joined us,
together with an old hunting friend, John Willis, a Donatello of the
Rocky Mountains,—wholly lacking, however, in that morbid self-
consciousness which made Hawthorne’s ‘faun’ go out of his head
because he had killed a man. Willis and I had been in Butte some
seventeen years before, at the end of a hunting trip in which we got
dead broke, so that when we struck Butte, we slept in an outhouse
and breakfasted heartily in a two-bit Chinese restaurant. Since then I
had gone through Butte in the campaign of 1900, the major part of
the inhabitants receiving me with frank hostility, and enthusiastic
cheers for Bryan.
“However, Butte is mercurial, and its feelings had changed. The
wicked, wealthy, hospitable, full-blooded, little city, welcomed me
with wild enthusiasm of a disorderly kind. The mayor, Pat Mullins,
was a huge, good-humored creature, wearing, for the first time in
his life, a top hat and a frock coat, the better to do honor to the
President.
“National party lines counted very little in Butte where the fight
was Heinze and anti-Heinze, Ex-Senator Carter and Senator Clark
being in the opposition. Neither side was willing to let the other have
anything to do with the celebration, and they drove me wild with
their appeals, until I settled that the afternoon parade and speech
was to be managed by the Heinze group of people, and the evening
speech by the anti-Heinze people; and that the dinner should
contain fifty of each faction and should be presided over in his
official capacity by the mayor. The ordinary procession, in barouches,
was rather more exhilarating than usual, and reduced the faithful
secret service men very nearly to the condition of Bedlamites. The
crowd was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of
whiskey, and in their desire to be sociable, broke the lines and
jammed right up to the carriage.... Seth Bullock, riding close beside
the rear wheel of my carriage, for there were hosts of so-called
‘rednecks’ or ‘dynamiters’ in the crowd, was such a splendid looking
fellow with his size and supple strength, his strangely marked
aquiline face, with its big moustache, and the broad brim of his soft
dark hat drawn down over his dark eyes. However, no one made a
motion to attack me....
 “My address was felt to be honor enough for one hotel, so the
dinner was given in the other. When the dinner was announced, the
Mayor led me in!—to speak more accurately, tucked me under one
arm and lifted me partially off the ground so that I felt as if I looked
like one of those limp dolls with dangling legs, carried around by
small children, like Mary Jane in the ‘Gollywogs,’ for instance. As
soon as we got in the banquet hall and sat at the end of the table,
the Mayor hammered lustily with the handle of his knife and
announced, ‘Waiter, bring on the feed.’ Then, in a spirit of pure
kindliness, ‘Waiter, pull up the curtains and let the people see the
President eat’;—but to this, I objected. The dinner was soon in full
swing, and it was interesting in many respects. Besides my own
party, including Seth Bullock and Willis, there were fifty men from
each of the Butte factions.
“In Butte, every prominent man is a millionaire, a gambler, or a
labor leader, and generally he has been all three. Of the hundred
men who were my hosts, I suppose at least half had killed their man
in private war or had striven to compass the assassination of an
enemy. They had fought one another with reckless ferocity. They
had been allies and enemies in every kind of business scheme, and
companions in brutal revelry. As they drank great goblets of wine,
the sweat glistened on their hard, strong, crafty faces. They looked
as if they had come out of the pictures in Aubrey Beardsley’s Yellow
Book. The millionaires had been laboring men once, the labor
leaders intended to be millionaires in their turn, or else to pull down
all who were. They had made money in mines, had spent it on the
races, in other mines or in gambling and every form of vicious
luxury, but they were strong men for all that. They had worked, and
striven, and pushed, and trampled, and had always been ready, and
were ready now, to fight to the death in many different kinds of
conflicts. They had built up their part of the West, they were men
with whom one had to reckon if thrown in contact with them.... But
though most of them hated each other, they were accustomed to
take their pleasure when they could get it, and they took it fast and
hard with the meats and wines.”
 The above description by the pen of my brother is the most vivid
that could be given of a certain type of man of the West. The types
were many.... The Sylvane Ferrises and the Will Merrifields were as
bold and resourceful as these inhabitants of the city of Butte and its
vicinity, but for the former, life was an adventure in which the spirit
of beauty and kindness had its share in happy contrast to the aims
and objects of the men described by my brother in this extraordinary
pen-picture. The picture is so forcibly painted that it brings before
one’s mind, almost as though it were an actual stage-setting, this
type of American, who would appear to be a belated brother of the
men of the barbaric period of the Middle Ages in the Old World, in
their case, however, rendered even more formidable by a New World
enterprise and acumen, strangely unlike what has ever been
produced before.
It was because of his knowledge of just such men, and of the
fact that they knew, although his aims were so different and his
ideals so alien to theirs, that the courage of his mental and physical
equipment could meet them on their own ground, that Theodore
Roosevelt was respected and admired, although sometimes hated,
by this type of humanity so opposed to the goals, actual and
spiritual, for which he worked so faithfully during his whole valiant
existence. They knew him for what he was, and feared him for the
qualities which he possessed in common with them, and even more
for the traits that they did not understand, and which, to them,
made him inevitably and forever “The Mysterious Stranger.”
 VII

TWO RECREANT NEW YORK POLICEMEN

Who serves her truly, sometimes saves the state.

—Arthur Hugh Clough.

There is sprung up a light for the righteous; and joyful

gladness for such as are true-hearted.—97th Psalm.

T
he years between 1890 and 1896 were busy years, with
devoted service as Civil Service Commissioner, winters at
Washington and happy summers at Oyster Bay, when
Theodore Roosevelt gave himself up to family joy and the activities
of the growing children. In 1893 he writes most lovingly of my
children and his—his never-failing sympathy in all the minor illnesses
of my little family, expressed in the most affectionate terms, and the
common sorrow which we both suffered in the loss of our devoted
aunt, Mrs. James Gracie, fills many pages during those years. We
met frequently during the summer-time, and when we met he
shared with me his many Washington experiences, but the letters
are largely to show me his loving interest in the many details of my
family life.

In August, however, he goes a little more fully into some matters

of public interest, and writes: “For the last fortnight, I have virtually
been living with Cabot, for I take all my meals at his house, though I
sleep at my own. [Mrs. Roosevelt and the children were at Oyster
Bay.] After breakfast, an hour spent by Cabot and myself in gloomy
discussion over the folly of the Mug-wumps and the wickedness of
the Democrats, I go to the office and work until four or five o’clock,
most of my work taking the light but not always agreeable shape of
a succession of interviews of varying asperity with Congressmen;
then I go to gruff old Olney’s and play tennis with him and any other
stray statesman, diplomat or military personage whom he has
captured for an hour or two. Sometimes, Cabot and I dine alone;
more often, we have in one or two of our cronies such as Tom Reed
or Senator Davis of Minnesota.... I think the tariff deadlock will break
in a day or two, when I shall be left alone here with so much work
on hand, however, that I fear I shall not get away until the end of
the month, when I shall go back to Sagamore and Edith and the
blessed bunnies.”
The intimacy with Senator Lodge, the charm of his library, where
tradition and intellect always held sway, were amongst the most
delightful associations that Washington gave to my brother during
the many years spent there, both before the days of the White
House and later under its roof.
Late in August of that year my brother Elliott died. My brother
Theodore came to me at once and we did together the things always
so hard to do connected with the death of those we love, and he
writes me afterward: “The sadness has been tempered by something
very sweet when I think of the way I was with you, my own darling
sister.” The quality of sharing, which, as I always say, was one of his
most marked attributes, never showed more unselfishly than in
times of sorrow. Almost immediately after the above letter, he
encloses to me a clipping from the newspaper of Abingdon, Va.,
about my brother Elliott, who had lived there for some time in
connection with the property of my husband in the Virginia
mountains. No one, not even my brother Theodore himself, was ever
more loved by those with whom he came in contact than was the
“Ellie” of the early days in 20th Street, and later wherever he went
he found rare and devoted friendship. The Virginian (the name of
the Abingdon paper) says:
 “The New York papers announce the death of Mr. Elliott
Roosevelt. This gentleman has been a member of this community for
the past two years, and although his stay was so brief, it was long
enough for him to make his impress as a whole-souled, genial
gentleman, courteous and kind at all times, with an ever ready cheer
for the enterprising or help to the weak. His name was a byword
among the needy, and his charities were always as abundant as they
were unostentatious. He was public spirited and generous, this much
we can truthfully say. His influence and his aid will be missed, and
more frequently than is generally known among those to whom it
was a boon.”
After speaking of the enclosure, my brother continues: “My
thoughts keep hovering around you, my darling sister, for I know
how you loved Elliott; what a gallant, generous, manly boy he was.
So many memories come back to me.”
In 1895 he had been appointed police commissioner, and was
already in the thick of the hard fight to reform the Police
Department. He writes in August of that year: “Governor Hill and I
have had two savage tilts. I have not the slightest idea of the
ultimate results of our move on the excise question, but we have
made a good fight against heavy odds.” Perhaps, of all the pieces of
work done by my brother, none stands out more clearly than the
splendid achievement of remaking the Police Department into a fine
working body, for which the whole city of New York had the utmost
respect, and on which it leaned for safety and protection. I have but
few letters from him during that period, for, much to our delight, he
was once more in our midst, and many and many a time would I go
down to the old Vienna bakery on the corner of 10th Street and
Broadway, and he would come from Mulberry Street, where his
office was, and together we would sit over the type of lunch he
loved so well: either bread and milk or a squab and café au lait. I
can still see Senator Lodge’s expression when he joined us on one of
these simple occasions, and asked in a somewhat saturnine manner
whether any one could get a respectable lunch at the place we loved
so well! What talks we had there over all the extraordinary situations
that arose in the Police Department. There he described to me the
delicious humor of the parade inaugurated by the German brewer
societies as a protest against his enforcement of the law. They were
parading to show their disapproval of him, but at the last moment,
as a wonderful piece of sarcasm, they decided to invite him to
review the parade, hardly thinking that he would accept the
invitation. Needless to say, he did accept it, and leaning over from
the platform where he had been invited to sit, he saw the mass of
marching men carrying banners with “Down with Teddy,” and various
other more unpleasant expletives. One company, as it passed the
reviewing-stand, called out: “Wo ist Teddy?” “Hier bin ich,” called out
the police commissioner, leaning over the railing and flashing his
white teeth good-humoredly at the protesting crowd, who, unable to
resist the sunshine of his personality, suddenly turned and, putting
aside the disapproving banners, cheered him to the echo.
It was during that same time, the story ran, that two recreant
policemen who left their beats at an inopportune moment were
called to the realization of their misdemeanor by coming face to
face, in a glass window-case, with a set of false teeth which, they
explained, grinned at them with a ferocity so reminiscent of the
strong molars of the police commissioner, that they almost fainted at
the sight, and hastily returned to their forsaken duties. Many and
many a settlement-worker told me in those days that they could go
anywhere in the most dangerous parts of the city, during the
administration of Theodore Roosevelt, and the police were always on
hand, always ready to protect those who needed their care.
At that time also I was amused one day when he told me the
story about his little Irish stenographer, a young girl whose
knowledge of orthography was less than her sympathetic interest in
the affairs of the police commissioner! He took a warm interest in
the nice young Irish girl, hard worker as she was, an important
factor in the support of a large family of younger children, and could
not bear to dismiss her from his service, in spite of her alarming
mistakes in spelling. He said he always had to look over her
manuscript and correct it in spite of his many other cares, and he
laughingly remarked that it was well he did, as having dictated the
following sentence in connection with a certain policeman, “I was
obliged to restrain the virtuous ardor of Sergeant Murphy, who, in
his efforts to bring about a state of quiet on the streets, would
frequently commit some assault himself,” the young Irish
stenographer, listening to the rapid dictation, spelled “some assault”
“somersault,” and, as my brother remarked, one could not but laugh
at the thought of Sergeant Murphy performing somersaults like a
circus clown on Mulberry Street, and, fortunately, the word caught
the ever-watchful eye of the police commissioner before the report
was printed, and, even in spite of the inconvenience, he set himself
to work to improve the young stenographer’s mistaken orthographic
efforts.
In spite of his busy days and busy nights, he had time, as usual,
to write to me when he thought that I needed his care or interest. I
was far from well at the time, but was obstinately determined to go
up to visit my boys at St. Paul’s School, and he writes me: “Won’t
you let Douglas and me go up to St. Paul’s, and you stay at home? If
you will do this, I shall positively go for anniversary on June 2nd. I
believe you should not go on these trips whether for pleasure or
duty, and should take more care of yourself. Your loving and anxious
brother.”
He himself has given in his autobiography many incidents
connected with his police commissionership.
The force were devoted to him, as were his Rough Riders later,
largely on account of the justice with which he treated them, and
the friendly attitude which he always maintained toward them. Otto
Raphael, a young Jew, and a young Irishman called Burke were two
of the men whom he promoted because of unusual bravery, and
their loyalty and admiration followed him unswervingly. On the sad
day when he was carried to the little cemetery at Oyster Bay, Burke
—now Captain Burke—had been put in charge of the police
arrangements for the funeral. As he stood by the grave, the captain
turned to me, the tears streaming down his face but with a smile in
his blue Irish eyes, and said: “Do you remember the fun of him, Mrs.
Robinson? It was not only that he was a great man, but oh, there
was such fun in being led by him. I remember one day when he was
governor, and I was in charge of him, and I was riding by the side of
his carriage down Madison Avenue, and he suddenly stuck his head
out of the window and, ‘Burke’ said he, ‘we are just going to pass
my sister’s house. I want to get out and say “how do you do” to my
sister.’ ‘I don’t think you have time, governor’ I said, ‘I am afraid you
are late now.’ ‘Oh, now, Burke, I want you to meet my sister. Get
somebody to hold your horse,’ he said; ‘it won’t take a minute.’ And
with that he leaped out of his carriage and was ringing the front
door-bell in a flash. I followed him and I heard him call out to you,
Mrs. Robinson, that he had his friend Lieut. Burke with him, and
could he bring him up-stairs to shake hands, and sure enough he
did, and when I went down-stairs again I heard him telling you
some story, and the two of you were laughing fit to kill. When I got
back that night to my wife, I said: ‘Susan, if you are ever
downhearted, all you have to do is to go up to 422 Madison Avenue
when the governor stops to see his sister, and hear them laugh.’”
The commissionership was a big job well done, and the city of
New York could not but feel a sense of great regret when President
McKinley promoted the active young commissioner to be assistant
secretary of the navy in 1897. It was his pride and one of his
greatest satisfactions in later years to feel that he was instrumental
in preparing our navy for the war with Spain. For many years he had
been convinced that the Spanish rule in Cuba should not continue;
and the condition in Cuba, he felt, was too intertwined with the
affairs of the United States to be differentiated from them. In the
days of President Cleveland, my brother had felt that action should
be taken, and in the same way he was convinced that Mr. McKinley
was only putting off the evil day by not facing the situation earlier in
his incumbency. As was the case in almost every crisis which arose,
either national or international, during my brother’s life, he seemed
to have a prescience of the future, and, therefore, he almost
invariably—sometimes before other public men were awake to the
contingency—sensed the need of taking steps to avert or meet
difficulties which he felt sure would soon have to be faced.
The young assistant secretary of the navy was not very popular
with the administration on account of the views which he felt it his
duty honestly to express. On March 6, 1898, he writes to my
husband: “Neither I nor anyone else, not even the President can do
more than guess. We are certainly drifting towards and not away
from war, but the President will not make war, and will keep out of it
if he possibly can. Nevertheless, with so much loose powder around,
a coal may hop into it at any moment. In a week or two, I believe,
we shall get that report. If it says the explosion was due to outside
work, it will be very hard to hold the country. [He refers to the
blowing up of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor.] But the
President undoubtedly will try peaceful means even then, at least, at
first.”
At the time of the writing of that letter, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt
had been very ill and was still very delicate, and my brother had not
only the many worries of the department in which he was working,
as he himself puts it, “like a fiend, for we have serious matters
ahead,” but he also had the great anxiety of her condition on his
heart. On the 28th of March: “I have been working up to the handle
here, and have about all I can do on hand now. I have very strong
convictions on this crisis, convictions which, I fear, do not commend
themselves to my official superiors.” And again on April 2, 1898, he
writes in full to my husband, who was always one of his most
welcome advisers:

Navy Department, April 2, 1898.

Dear Old Man:
In one way I was very much pleased at receiving your
letter, for it shows the thoughtfulness and affection you
always feel for me. In another way your letter makes it very
hard for me. All my friends have written me as you have, and
yet I am convinced that you are all wrong. Do not
misunderstand me. It may well be that I can’t get down with
an Expeditionary force even if, as I think unlikely, an
Expeditionary force is started before next fall. Indeed I think I
shall probably have to stay here, and I should certainly stay
here until we got a successor broken in. But if I get a fair
chance to go, or could make a fair chance, I conscientiously
feel that I ought to go. My usefulness in my present position
is mainly a usefulness in time of peace, because in time of
peace the naval officers cannot speak freely to the Secretary
and I can and do, both to the Secretary and President, even
at the cost of jeopardizing my place. But in time of war the
naval officers will take their proper positions as military
advisers, and my usefulness would be at an end. I should
simply be one of a number of unimportant bureau chiefs. If I
went I shouldn’t expect to win any military glory, or at the
utmost to do more than feel I had respectably performed my
duty; but I think I would be quite as useful in the Army as
here, and it does not seem to me that it would be honorable
for a man who has consistently advocated a warlike policy not
to be willing himself to bear the brunt of carrying out that
policy. I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite.
If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or
ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I
preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the
right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I
want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and
not from merely selfish reasons, or from an impulse of levity.
I shall answer Corinne in a day or two. April 13th I was to
have been in Boston, but if we have trouble, I, of course,
can’t get away. I hope Corinne will stay over the following
Sunday, so I may have a good chance to see her.
Faithfully yours.
 The above is a most characteristic letter. Those who were
nearest to him, like myself and my husband, and even Senator
Lodge, were doubtful of his wisdom in leaving his important position
(I mean important for the affairs of the country, not for himself) as
assistant secretary of the navy to take active part in the war, should
war come, but he himself knew quite well that being made of the
fibre that he was, he must act up to what he had preached. Nothing
is more absolutely Theodore Roosevelt, was ever more thoroughly
Theodore Roosevelt, than that sentence. “I have a horror of the
people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything
worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I
act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would
have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I
want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not
from merely selfish reasons or from an impulse of levity.” No
sentence ever written by my brother more fitly expressed his
attitude toward conviction and acting up to conviction.
 VIII

COWBOY AND CLUBMAN

A RHYME OF THE ROUGH RIDERS

The ways of fate they had trod were as wide
As the sea from the shouting sea,
But when they had ranged them side by side,
Strenuous, eager, and ardent-eyed,
They were brothers in pluck, they were brothers in pride,
As the veriest brethren be.

They heard no bugle-peal to thrill

As they crouched in the tangled grass,
But the sound of bullets whirring shrill
From hidden hollow and shrouded hill;
And they fought as only the valiant will
In the glades of Guasimas.

Aye, they fought, let their blood attest!—

The blood of their comrades gone;
Fought their bravest and fought their best,
As when, like a wave, in their zealous zest
They swept and surged o’er the sanguine crest
Of the heights of San Juan.

So here’s to them all—a toast and a cheer!—

From the greatest down to the least,
The heroes who fronted the deadliest fear,
Leader and lad, each volunteer,
The men whom the whole broad land holds dear
From the western sea to the east!
—Clinton Scollard, 1898.
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