10 VINU

PROLOGUE

He was not a second Andrew Jackson. He was not a second anybody. He was Theodore Roosevelt, himself, unique. There has never been anybody like him in the past, and, though the world wait a long while, there will never be any one like him in the future.

For he had something of the Prophet Ezekiel in him and something of Natty Bumppo, something of Hildebrand the valiant warrior, something of Olaf the sea-king, something of Cromwell, something of Charlemagne. He belongs to the Heroic Line, and we need not ask what those grand fellows would have thought of him.

For eight years before he died Theodore Roosevelt was beaten in every political campaign he entered. During those years he made "mistakes" that would have killed and buried twelve ordinary public men. He was placed on the shelf as a mummy a halfdozen times, yet, to the end, every word he spoke was "news"; and when he went to a health farm and lost fourteen pounds, the newspapers carried the tidings, column-long, on the front page, because they knew that the least thing that happened to “T. R." was more interesting to the average American citizen than a diplomatic secret or a battle. He was more conspicuous in retirement than most of our Presidents have been under the lime-light of office.

For Theodore Roosevelt was the epitome of the Great Hundred Million; the visible, individual expression of the American people in this first quarter <of the twentieth century. He was the typical Amer

ican. He had the virtues we like to call American, and he had the faults. He had energy, enterprise, chivalry, insatiable eagerness to know things, trust in men, idealism, optimism, fervor; some intolerance; vast common sense; deep tenderness with children; single-minded fury in battle. He had the gift of quick decision; a belief in cutting through if you couldn't satisfactorily go around; real respect for the other fellow as long as he was straight, and immeasurable contempt for him if he was crooked or a quitter; love of fair play, of hardship, of danger, of a good fight in a good cause. A level-headed winner, a loser who could grin, his glory was not that he was extraordinary, but that he was so complete an expression of the best aspirations of the average American. He was the fulfiller of our good intentions; he was the doer of the heroic things we all want to do and somehow don't quite manage to accomplish.

He knew us and we knew him. He was human, he was our kind, and, being our kind, his successes and his fame were somehow our successes and our fame likewise.

There is something magical about that. You can no more explain it than you can explain Theodore Roosevelt. And you cannot explain him any more than you can explain electricity or falling in love.

You can only tell his story, which we will now proceed to do.

IN

CHAPTER I

A BOY ARRIVES AND DISCOVERS THE WORLD

'N those days church spires were still the most conspicuous features in the sky-line of New York. Old Trinity still looked down upon the roofs of Wall Street, instead of craning its neck, looking up at them, as to-day. Grace Church, huddled and hidden among dry-goods stores and glove-factories at Broadway and Eleventh Street, in those days pleasantly dominated a dignified neighborhood of stately residences, where the "best families" lived on the borders of Washington Square.

Canal Street was the northern boundary of the city's business section. Ladies (in crinolines) went to Maiden Lane for their furs; to Park Row and Barclay Street for their dresses. The newest hotel, the St. Nicholas, gorgeous beyond description, according to the guide-books of the time, stood at the corner of Spring Street and Broadway.

"I remember," said the Garrulous Old Party we used to know-"I remember when Gramercy Park was 'way up-town."

That was in the 'fifties.

New York was in its 'teens in those days. There

were trees on Broadway, but no cable-cars. There were not even horse-cars. Those ambling conveyances, known grandly as the Harlem Railroad, were confined to the side avenues-Third, Sixth, and Eighth. Up Broadway and up Fifth Avenue lumbered innumerable omnibuses.

It was a small New York compared with the metropolis of to-day. But there were dust and bustle even then. Old-timers complained that life was becoming all hurry and confusion, and indignant citizens wrote to newspapers, asking whether a fare on the horse-car did not entitle one to a seat. The New York Fire Department about this time resolved, "if possible, to procure a steam fire-engine" and to build an engine-house "somewhere between Bleecker Street and Fourteenth."

New York was young, but it was beginning to grow up.

The Republic, too, was young, for all its eighty years; but it, too, was growing and its growing-pains were sharp. The 'fifties were a tempestuous and bitter decade that began with Clay's Compromise, which was supposed to settle the slavery question but settled nothing, and ended with the election of Lincoln, which in due time settled a great many things. Those intervening ten years were years of ferment. There was gold in California; there were 'Avenging Angels" in Utah; there was fire-andsword in Kansas. Everywhere was unrest. Agitators abounded. Abolitionists, woman suffragists, social reformers of every variety, preachers, lyceum lecturers, held forth as they never held forth be

fore and have never held forth since. Spiritualistic mediums flourished. Fugitive slaves were snatched from their legal captors and spirited away with a blessing. "Society," in New York, in Saratoga, in Newport, danced and dined with a reckless extravagance unheard of in this Puritan Republic.

The 'fifties began with the hope, expressed by North as well as South, by Democrats as well as Whigs, that the slavery issue was settled, to be agitated no more. But by 1854 the new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, had rekindled the sleeping fires. On the plains of Kansas and in the halls of Congress the struggle drifted nearer and nearer civil war. In the Congressional elections of 1858 came the first real test of strength of the Republicans' new anti-slavery party. That summer, here and there through Illinois, Lincoln debated with Douglas, clarified the issues and, by skilful questioning, made Douglas commit himself to doctrines that turned the South against him without gaining him the support of the North.

The campaign drew to a close. On October 15th Lincoln and Douglas, at Alton, held their last debate. On the 25th, at Rochester, Seward made his famous "irrepressible conflict" speech.

On October 26th, in New York City, Tammany Hall, as always on the wrong side, enthusiastically indorsed President Buchanan with booming of guns, music, a bonfire, and a half-empty house. On the 28th Gen. Jefferson Davis left Washington after an extended stay in the North, "charmed with