Harvard memorial window in St. Saviour Church (Southwark, London), in May, 1905:

"So considerable have been the contributions of Harvard's sons to the social and intellectual life of our nation that, if all other books and papers were destroyed, our country's history could be fairly reproduced from the Harvard University Catalogue, and from what is known of the lives of the alumni there registered. And if you ask me if she is still true to her ancient watchwords, Veritas and Christo et Ecclesiae, I can answer that in our own time, in a single quarter of a century, she has sent forth Phillips Brooks to be a pillar of Christ and the Church, and Theodore Roosevelt to be a champion of the Truth."

CHAPTER XV

LAUREL AND CYPRESS

The triumphal tour of the Roosevelt party through Europe drew to an end. And, from what my active, eager classmate wrote and said, it is evident that he had become bored with it before the end. He had enjoyed the novel experience of dwelling in marble halls and talking with titled persons. And he had found that they varied in character and intelligence precisely as did the people whom he had known in his native land, statesmen or neighbors at Oyster Bay.

fellow

The qualities in him which had most appealed to his friends in the several European peerages were his newness and his apparent frankness; previously they had flocked to William Cody, "Buffalo Bill", admirable type of the American border-scout and manager of the bewildering "Wild West Show." Roosevelt was simply a later curio to them. But the astute ex-President was by no means as naïve in his frank expressions of opinion as he seemed. Always, behind his daring and flattering frankness, there sat an intelligent estimate of how much direct

statement they could bear. And behind his picturesque speech and frontier stories lay a background of reserve and standards of cultivation quite equal to their own.

So Roosevelt enjoyed it all, with that capacity for enjoyment so marked in him. And then he tired of it; he had sounded the good minds which he had met and had been amused at the foibles of the feebler folk; and now he longed for home and the environment which was native and dear to him.

I know of nothing more like his own impulsive self than his sending from London for Sheriff Seth Bullock. He explained thus, "By this time I felt that I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my neighborhood dialect.” That "neighborhood dialect" was stretching it a little. The simple fact was that Roosevelt loved and trusted that fearless, outspoken Black Hills sheriff and always had done so, since the two first met in the Far West, and Seth confessed presently, "Yer see, by yer looks I thought yer wuz some sort of a tin-horn gamblin' outfit, an' I might have ter keep my eye on yer."

Sheriff Bullock and his wife went over, as Roosevelt desired; and the presence of this exponent of the elemental human virtues rested Roosevelt, I think, and made the desired offset to the attentions of dukes and duchesses.

Roosevelt's relations with persons of more rudimentary social training than himself, whether in North Dakota or at Oyster Bay, or during a walk through Rock Creek at Washington, were always interesting to the analytic eye. Charles Washburn recalls a visit which he made to Sagamore Hill after Roosevelt's duties as President had terminated. And Roosevelt remarked, "I am a Democrat and a radical. I like to go to the Lodge (Masonic, not Cabot!) and sit on those hard benches while my cousin's gardener presides."

An exquisite shading of this "democratic” quality in Roosevelt comes out in a story told by Albert Loren Cheney. "At one of Mr. Roosevelt's receptions at Oyster Bay, two members of a reception committee held rather old-fashioned ideas as to conventional dress; and they appeared in plain business suits, while the other members of the committee wore Prince Albert coats and silk hats. The constraint was somewhat noticeable. And when the two men in business suits approached the President, his eyes twinkled, he raised his hands, and exclaimed, 'Here come the aristocrats.'

On Roosevelt's return to the United States, the popular enthusiasm was boundless. Probably never in the history of our country, during a peaceful period, was so much admiration lavished on a plain citizen. In fact it became hysterical, no less.