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CHAPTER XIX.

Roosevelt as Scholar, Author and Orator

HOSE who have read the preceding pages in which the multitudinous activities of Theodore Roosevelt's life are detailednot only those of his many years of legislative and official labor, but as well those of his rare intervals of leisure—may wonder how he found time even to think and read, much less to write. When we read the list of books that have come from his pen, of voluminous messages sent in at somewhat frequent intervals to Congress, and of orations in all parts of the land, and are told of the great variety of information which he has picked up from his extensive reading, we fairly stand amazed, and cannot but look upon the man as a marvel. Never slack or slow in his official duties, snatching apparently every moment of leisure for outdoor exercise, he has managed to do as much work intellectually as many men who devote their lives to literary pursuits.

The only way in which this could have been done was by letting no moment pass unoccupied. Apparently this indefatigable student never sinks back in his chair to rest his brain and his body. The book is always at hand and is snatched up to fill any interval which others give to reposeful relaxation. Albert Shaw, who was with him during the wild excitement of the Convention that selected him for VicePresident, tells us of seeing him in an inner room, resting from the turmoil by reading Thucydides. This was not exactly light reading or mild mental recreation, but it was of the Rooseveltian type.

His college class-mates tell us that, while visiting the rooms of his fellow-students, he would at any pause in the tide of talk be apt to pick up a book and quickly become so absorbed in its contents as to forget all around him. Then, suddenly becoming aware of his lack of politeness, he would hurry away with guilty haste from the room and the raillery of his companions. This was always his habit— to bury himself in his book, and become so lost in it as to forget all

around him. He fairly lived in the book, and had a remarkable faculty of getting out of it all of value it contained.

The chance to dip into literature seemed never to be neglected. We have his own statement that, after bringing to earth some huge behemoth, on the African plains, he would throw himself down beside the monster, pull a book from his pocket, and solace his rest by reading. The books he took with him on this excursion, his "pigskin library" he calls it, were bound in pigskin that they might be fitted for taking up with hands soiled with blood, powder-stain, gunoil and other ingredients ruinous to any respectably bound book.

It is a strange list, a very hodge-podge of books which he names for us. In it we find politics included in the "Federalist"; history in Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," in Froissart and Macaulay; Sacred lore in the Bible and Apocrypha; epic poetry in the poems of Homer, Dante, Spenser and Milton, the "Song of Roland," and the "Nibelungenlied"; lyric poetry in the works of Shelley, Emerson, Longfellow, Tennyson, Keates, Poe and Bret Harte; essays in the writings of Macaulay, Bacon, Lowell, and others; drama in Euripides, Shakespeare and Marlowe; primitive life in Barrow's stories of the Gypsies; fiction in works of Dickens, Thackeray, Cooper, and Scott; humor in "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer," and various other branches of literature in other works. To it were added from time to time such books as "Alice in Wonderland," "Tartarin de Tarascan, Don Quixote," and works of Darwin, Goethe, Huxley and several French writers.

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Here was certainly a highly catholic selection. His taste for books seems to have been omniverous. One would say that it was "all grist that came to his mill." He gives us other lists of books which he took with him on other occasions, saying that these "could only be a tiny fraction of those for which I cared and which I continually read, and that I cared for them neither more nor less than for those I left at home.

We can well understand his abundant reading of history and works of morals and of political philosophy, but would hardly expect one of his practical turn of mind to devote so much attention to poetry as he seems to have done. His devotion to fiction leads to

the same reflection, and indicates that imagination is as fully developed in him as the reasoning powers.

There is little evidence of this imaginative trait in his own literary productions, his style being always direct and vigorous, getting to the point without circumlocution and as literal as he can make it. His works are also apt to suffer from haste and be given to the world without the strict editorial supervision which they should have had. But the wonder is that he has found the time to write them at all. He certainly must have lacked that for literary polishing. Yet withal he has the faculty of making his meaning clear, no one can mistake his purpose, and while there is little "fine writing" in his books, their style is direct, terse and vigorous. There is no beating around the bush in their pages.

Certainly the Rooseveltian style does not appeal to all readers, if we may judge from a tale which he tells us with much gusto, fully enjoying its tart criticism of one of his works. On one occasion he happened into a bookstore somewhere in far-off Idaho and saw a copy of his "Winning of the West," in the window. lessly toward the book, he asked the proprietor:

"Who is this man Roosevelt?"

"Oh, he's a ranch-driver up in the cattle country.'
"What do you think of his book?"

Pointing care

"Well," said the dealer, after a brief hesitation, "I've often thought I'd like to meet the author and tell him that if he'd stuck to running ranches and not tried to write books, he'd have cut a bigger figure at his trade."

To return from Roosevelt's style as a writer to his methods as a reader, his friends say that his quickness in getting through books is as remarkable as the amount of information he seems to extract from them. He goes down a page with such rapidity that he is at its bottom before many readers would have grasped the meaning of the first paragraph. Yet he seems to get at the kernel of it all in this swift way and his retentive memory enables him to retain with ease the pith of many books.

He reads a newspaper article in the same manner, though naturally much more swiftly, getting its significance almost at a

glance, and frequently commenting upon or answering it before one would think he was half through the reading. That he takes in the substance of his books is shown by his skill and intelligence in reviewing them. This is a work in which he takes delight and review publishers are usually very glad to have his comments. They are, as a rule, made without rereading the book reviewed, his recollection of its contents after one rapid perusal being sufficient.

His memory serves him well in all his literary work-fortunately for him as a writer, in view of the fact that his work is frequently interrupted. He has the faculty which many lack, of taking up his subject just where he left it to attend to some other duty, and going on with it as if his line of thought had not been broken. His work is not written, but is dictated to a stenographer, the type-written copy being afterwards gone over carefully and interlined with emendations as new suggestions come to him from the reading.

The literary recreations of our author are by no means confined to books. His speeches and messages make tomes in themselves, all of them apparently as carefully prepared as his books. Thus his famous speech at the Sorbonne in Paris is said to have been written months before it was delivered and placed in the hands of American editors weeks in advance of its delivery.

As a speech-maker and a message-writer President Roosevelt is notably practical. Here we find no loitering over his subject, wandering into any of the by-paths of thought or description, as he is warranted in doing in his books, but every thought is flung out straight and hard, hitting its mark as a bullet hits its target. There is no misunderstanding him here. Imagination never enters into the subject of his oratory. He is direct and literal-verbose, some think; no other President has matched him in the length of his messages; but this comes partly from the variety of subjects which he deals with, foreign and domestic alike, and more from his habit of arguing out his points, going to great length of statement rather than be misapprehended or that his statement shall be inadequately presented. The fact is, that his messages were written for the American people quite as much as for Congress, and were read and appreciated by this great populace with little regard to Congressional opinion. He had in view a much larger audience than that of the Capitol.

In his messages, and more particularly in his speeches, he deals largely in moral essays, directed against the crying evils of the times and advocating their reform or eradication. His arrows of speech are aimed at law-breaking corporations, fraudulent operations of all kinds, oppression in every shape, everything in which common honesty is wanting and his doctrine of a square deal for all men, rich and poor alike, is ignored. In this sense, he is a great moral philosopher, a law-giver of these modern days.

And the pith of a hundred orations and a score of messages is gathered up in his great Sorbonne address, in which he has brought together the substance of what he has been saying for years, as ripened by reflection in his mind, and flung out as his ultimatum of opinion upon the evils, dishonesties, and needs of the age.

Platitudes, we are told, his aphorisms are. Very true; the ten commandments and the sayings of Confucius, Buddha and Christ are full of similar lessons to the world and it is not easy to add anything to them. But a new moral gospel, fitted to this new age, is timely and welcome, and Theodore Roosevelt seems the man best fitted, by character and position alike, for the task, even if he simply repeats moral lessons of the ages.

He makes no claim to be a genius. He is not especially original. But he is great in being full of his mission and delivering it in sledgehammer blows which cannot be ignored. Certainly no man of this young century has half matched him. in bringing the world to a realization of its duty and of teaching its people what they must do to be saved. It is the spirit of the time that moves in the man. We feel it stirring all about us; a thirst for reform and moral elevation; an uplifting sentiment in favor of business and political honor and integrity. Theodore Roosevelt may have had but little to do with starting the movement, but he is its chief apostle.

We may close this review by quoting some passages from his utterances, showing his point of view of the needful moral status of the nations:

"Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward those who are not well-to-do, the hard refusal to consider the rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits