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of the class has placed on record in an English magazine that Mr. Roosevelt frequently interrupted the lecturer with a request for more detailed information, and from this fact the writer argued that he was slow of wit. But it is barely possible that he had the courage to confess his ignorance where others in the lecture room chose to glide over the hard places in silence.

Meanwhile his interest in politics was steadily leading him in that direction. At the outset the prospect was not a pleasing one. To gain an entrance into public life was not an easy thing for a man of his stamp in the city of New York. In the small towns, where most of our successful public men make their beginning, it is simple enough for bright young men to get a chance to show what there is in them. Their friends and neighbors will start them, and if they do well, their community will push them.

There was, however, nearly a three to one majority against Mr. Roosevelt's party in his community, while, as for his friends and neighbors, they had nothing to do with politics, except to vote on election day. Hotel lobbies and barrooms, and not the

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homes, were the political centres of New York. All nominations and honors were controlled by the bosses, who, with their machines, could have no more use for him than they had for his father, when they refused to accept him as the Collector of the Port.

Nevertheless, Mr. Roosevelt, with the faith which has overcome so many obstacles in his pathway, went into politics within a year after leaving college. A university education and foreign travel had left him still a simple faith in his country, an ardent type of Young America. He had none of that despair and disdain which culture sometimes gives a youth. He attended a Harvard dinner in New York years after leaving college, and a professor there told of an experience with such a man among the recent graduates. He had asked this graduate what he was going to do now that he had received an education. "Oh, really, do you know, professor," the callow citizen replied, "it does not seem to me that there is anything much worth while." Mr. Roosevelt, on hearing this story, was greatly wrought up, and striking the table a loud whack, declared "that fellow ought to have been knocked in the head." When he himself was a young

graduate he saw plenty to do and at once went about it.

He did not go into politics like some men of means whom he has since ridiculed and who "get together in a big hall where they vociferously demand reform as if it were some concrete substance which could be handed out to them in slices and who then disband with a feeling of the most serene self-satisfaction." He thought that political conditions should be made better, but he did not call upon some one else to make them better; he himself undertook to do his share of the hard work.

He determined to join his district political club. His Fifth Avenue friends laughed heartily. It was too funny for anything to think of a Roosevelt in ward politics. "You'll meet only the groom and the saloon-keeper there," they are remembered to have said. "Well," replied the youth, "if that is so, they are the governing class in this city then, and they rule you. They must be better men than you

are."

His home at that time was at 55 West 45th Street, which was in the 21st Assembly district. The Republican club or association for that district met in

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