The Riverside Literature Series THE AMERICANISM OF EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE BY JOHN A. LESTER, PH.D. Instructor in English, The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO The Riverside Press Cambridge FD INTRODUCTION THIS book is intended to serve a double purpose — to provide a selection of striking passages from Theodore Roosevelt's writings, and to serve as an interpretation of his mental processes, of his moral, social, and political philosophy and of the life in which that philosophy expressed itself. The book is a unit; and, unless the compiler is altogether deceiving himself, the reader will find in the material contained in it a logical progression from the first page to the last. The selections, the reader will note, are divided into three major parts. In the first will be found stories from Mr. Roosevelt's historical writings which reveal in vivid flashes the background of his mind. To understand fully the significance of his doctrine, it is important to realize with what ardor Mr. Roosevelt dwelt on heroic actions. In his mind, the memory of the Nation's inspiring past hung like a glowing tapestry the "back-drop" of the scene in which dream and thought and will fought out the tremendous drama of his life. No one can understand Roosevelt's approach to the problems of personal and national life who does not take into account how firmly his feet were planted on certain elementary conceptions of heroic virtue. It was not at all that he wished to turn back the hands of the clock, and, rejecting modern progress, return to the simpler customs of the fathers; but that, accepting the age of electricity, he wished to see it made sound and |