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his party even when he believes it to be wrong. It may bring little comfort to the wight who expects a partisan to desert his party at each trivial offense; but it shows none the less a political sagacity which prevents a man sacrificing all his influence by "bolting" every time his suggestions are not engrafted into law. It is a temptation peculiarly seductive to young men. But it failed to win this stalwart son of New York. He voted in the convention against binding the delegates to support the nominee-whoever this might be. But when that nomination. was recorded, he gave his support to the ticket, so far as voting went. And had not a personal calamity-the death of his mother-fallen at this period, he would doubtless have given an even more active support to the choice of his party at Chicago.

As it was he maintained his relations with his fellows inside the organization. And though he withdrew from active intercourse with them, and devoted himself for some years to more stirring events in the far West, there was no blot on his partisan escutcheon. And when the summer of 1886 brought the demand for a candidate for the mayoral chair in the city of New

York, his was the one name used to conjure with. Grover Cleveland was President of the United States. Less than two years had elapsed since his election to that high office. Both personally and politically he was, at the hour, invincibly strong. The Democrats of the city had nominated a ticket of exceptional excellence. Hon. Abram Hewitt was chosen as the standardbearer in the municipal fight, and he was recognized the country over as a man of clean morals and high ideals. Against him the independents nominated Henry George, then on the top wave of a popularity won with his writings. For the author of "Progress and Poverty" expressed the case of the "army of discontent"; and New York city had hailed him.

The election occurred in November, and Mr. Roosevelt met his second defeat in political life. Mr. Hewitt's vote was 90,552. That of Mr. George was 68,110, while 60,435 ballots were deposited for Mr. Roosevelt. It was, from the beginning, the most hopeless race imaginable. There was no sort of chance for the defeat of the opposing ticket, except in the retirement of the George ticket. And as the friends of that theorist insisted on his remaining in the field, Mr.

Roosevelt's showing was the least considerable of the three.

If he had been a man of ordinary timber, that would have been the last of him. He had already been recognized as a man of note. Harper's Weekly had been placing him in complimentary cartoons ever since the passage of the merit law at Albany, yet he had been overthrown by the voters of his city. But this was a matter of the smallest concern to him. He knew he was right, and was certain he could "bide the lapse of time." It would surely bring his justification.

Meantime he withdrew from the "madding crowd." Two years before, when the death of his wife and of his mother had combined to depress him, he had gone to the far Northwest, and established a home on the banks of the upper Missouri. He had engaged in the cattle industry. He had renewed his habit of hunting. Whether New York city elected or rejected him was a matter of the smallest importance, for he was almost more a guest than a resident in the city of his birth when his friends, to the number of more than sixty thousand, rallied to his standard in the fall of 1886.

Now, in this portion of his life, no less than

in those passages where success attended him, it is fair to take note of the man's accomplishment. In the first place it must not be understood for a moment that he went to the ranch life in the Bad Lands because of reverses in his experience. He went there when he was twenty-six years old. He had already served three terms in the assembly of his State. His wife had died, and his mother-his sole remaining parenthad followed. He was come to the time for thought. And it is a curious phase of the man's career that he turned in this hour of retirement to the employment of those attributes with which his previous study had supplied him. He thought, and he wrote. And the nomination for the mayoralty, wholly unsolicited, made small disturbance in the course of his development. He had known the sweets of victory. He had supported the crushing burden of defeat. And he had found in the great plains of the Northwest the very experience of all others that could broaden and deepen his being. He gathered there the physical power which was to provide the basis for his labors later on. He was for the time near to nature; and in that communion he gathered a quality of wisdom and of strength

which nothing else could have furnished. Some of his countrymen knew the city, with all its multifarious environment. Some knew the country, and were narrowed in their range of vision, hampered in their view. But he was gathering the material and arriving at the view-point which should equip him for judging and weighing composite matters later on.

Some men are great in victory, but not so constituted as to brook reverses. Of these was Senator Conkling, of Mr. Roosevelt's own State. Some are developed while continually oppressed by adverse majorities. Of these was Mr. Henry George, who contributed to Mr. Roosevelt's defeat. But here was a man superior to the variations of fortune, and steadfast alone in his progress toward the one ideal. He stood for good government as much as in the days of his successes at Albany. He helped the nation to better citizenship by realizing a better Americanism himself. And in these years when failure confronted him he proved the metal that was in him more than ever he had done in the days of his most exuberant triumph.

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