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 the fact that in a sudden, seemingly unexpected crisis he would act with great rapidity. This happened 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 elements 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 contingencies 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, because 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 opportunity for all men, and that any combination of capital or

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of business, which threatened the control of the Government 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 was regarded by Theodore Roosevelt as a good citizen. The vulgar 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 sympathetic as a sense of humor. This great gift the good fairies conferred upon Theodore Roosevelt at his No man ever had a more birth in unstinted measure. abundant sense of humor-joyous, irrepressible humor

and it never deserted him. Even at the most serious and even perilous moments if there was a gleam of humor anywhere he saw it and 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 very 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 dislike 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,

laborious, or dull. If he had made any effort to be always interesting and entertaining he would have failed and been tiresome. He was unfailingly attractive because he was always perfectly natural and his own 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 popularity, a man of ideals. He did not expose them daily on the roadside with language fluttering about them like the Thibetan who ties his slip 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, although 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 sentiment or hated sentimentality more than he. He preached

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 when they were to be translated into realities 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. They 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 hardest 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 life tell us why the pride and interest which his fellow countrymen felt in him were always touched with the warm light 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."