Foreword Eminent men are often distinguished from their fellows less by the possession of any one faculty or power than by the possession of a remarkable combination of powers. It is such a combination which characterizes Theodore Roosevelt and has given him his peculiar pre-eminence. The combination is of characteristics which seem to be conflicting and even contradictory: sobriety of judgment with great alertness of mind; passionate idealism in thought with patient conservatism in action; insight into and sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men conjoined to independence and individualism in thought and act; a mind open to receive the opinions of others and great tenacity in holding to his own convictions; ethical ideals which practical politicians have called impracticable with skill in politics which is the admiration and despair of practical politicians; ability to understand the unconscious or half conscious life of a great people and to give such expression to it that in his utterances they find their own better selves interpreted; perfect willingness to utter truisms if they are needed with remarkable skill in selecting the time and place for utterance which makes them almost, if not quite, sensational; an apparently inexhaustible physical and intellectual energy which bestows life on his comrades rather than demands life from them; and a spirit of humanity which makes his phrase, “delighted to see you," a real expression of a genuine feeling, the sincerity of which cannot be doubted. Such are some of the elements in this complex character which combine to make him the most popular man of our day, and to make thousands of men who have never seen or heard him anxious to come into personal relations with him. This volume of excerpts from his utterances will render such persons a good service. In its fragmentariness, it may be compared to the Letters of Thomas Carlyle or John Stuart Mill, or to the Table-Talk of Martin Luther or Samuel T. Coleridge. For an understanding of the political or ethical ideals of such a man one must read his completer utterances. But for a more intimate acquaintance with the man himself, one desires correspondence, conversation, or, |