that he frowns upon it; I do not believe that he has often had the chance. But, somehow, there is no temptation to that kind of familiarity, which does not imply any less affection, but just the reverse. He may call me Jake and I like nothing better. But though I am ten years older than he, he was always Mr. Roosevelt with me. His rough-riders might sing of him as Teddy, but to his face they called him Colonel, with the mixture of affection and respect that makes troopers go to death as to a dance in the steps of a leader. The Western plainsmen quickly forgot the tenderfoot in the man who could shoot and ride though he came out of the East and wore eye-glasses, and who never bragged or bullied but knew his rights and dared maintain them. He was Mister Roosevelt there from the second day on the ranch. But in those old days at home he was Ted with the boys, no doubt. For he was a whole boy and got out of it all that was going, after he got it going. He has told me that it took some time, that as a little fellow he was timid, and that when bigger boys came along and bullied him he did not know what to do about it. I have a notion that he quickly

found out and that they did not come back often.

A woman who lived next door to the Roosevelts in East Twentieth Street told me of how, passing in the street, she saw young Theodore hanging out of a second-story window and ran in to tell his mother.

"If the Lord," said she, as she made off to catch him, "had not taken care of Theodore, he would have been killed long ago."

In after years the Governor of New York told me, with a reminiscent gleam in his eye, how his boy, the third Theodore in line, had swarmed down" the leader of the Executive Mansion to go and hear the election returns, rather than go out through the door. There was no frightened neighbor to betray his exploit then, for it was dark, which made it all the more exciting. It was the Governor himself who caught him. The evidence is, I think, that the Theodores were cut out pretty much on the same pattern.

Of that happy childhood's home, with the beautiful mother of blessed memory and the father who rode and played with the children, and was that, alas! rarest of parents, their

chum and companion as well as their just judge when occasion demanded, I have caught many a glimpse I wish I might reveal here, but that shall be theirs to keep. The family romps at home, the strolls on forest paths which their father taught them early to love; their gleeful dashes on horseback, he watchfully leading on, the children scampering after, a merry crew; of how at his stern summons to breakfast, "Childrén!" they one and all fell downstairs together in their haste to be there, they speak yet with a tenderness of love that discloses the rarely strong and beautiful soul that was his. It was only the other day that, speaking with an old employee of the Children's Aid Society, of which the elder Roosevelt was a strong prop, I learned from him how deep was the impression made by his gentle courtesy toward his wife when he brought her to the lodging-house on his visits.

To see him put on her wraps and escort her from room to room was beautiful," he said. "It seemed to me that I never knew till then what the word gentleman meant." How little we, any of us, know what our example may mean for good or for ill! Here, after thirty