were receiving new impetus. The Chemical Bank of New York was proposed, and Cornelius Roosevelt was one of the founders of it. In the larger cities of the country the social life was becoming more prominent. Madam Washington had several years age established a precedent for certain punctilios which made the General's drawingrooms almost a court. Among the plainer people there was an unfounded fear that probably the institutions of Great Britain were to be introduced now that the land was free from the throne, and that the excess of formality accredited to General Washington was to lead to a regimen where none but those in authority of office or wealth would be tolerated. The women of the Roosevelt family were prominent in social affairs, but they and other ladies of means tabooed the idea of social seclusion, which was never intended by General Washington, stickler though he might be as to etiquette. The Presidents Adams and their consorts were more democratic, and the merchants and business men of the country understood the trend of affairs, and the feminine portion of their households established a form of society which, while free from a too-open democratic leaning, was eligible to all who by reason of gentleness of birth, strength of prowess, learning, or gifts of art and success of endeavor, might desire to step across the threshold. The Roosevelt ladies were prominent in charities as well, and were not behindhand in hospital and prison work where the ameliorating hand of woman might do so much to heal the wounds of the body and spirit.

James J. Roosevelt, a brother of Cornelius Roosevelt, was a warm friend and ardent admirer of Andrew Jackson, and "Old Hickory" was not averse to consulting him now and then. James Roosevelt served in the New York Legislature, and was a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York from 1851 to 1859.

A cousin of Theodore, James Henry Roosevelt, was distinguished for his philanthropies, and left an estate of a million dollars, which by

good management was doubled in value, to found the famous Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Cornelius V. S. Roosevelt, the grandfather, married Mary Bonhill, of Philadelphia. From this union issued Theodore Roosevelt, the father.

After all that is said of the ancestry of the boy who was born in 1858, much is owing to the father, who married Martha Bullock.

The boy born in 1858 was early to be inducted into the troublous times of war, though too young to understand. The troubles between the North and the South occurred when he was a child of tender years, and his recollection of the dreariness of those days was to be only the brightness of it all, when he was taken to see the troops depart, flags flying, drums beating and bands playing. His father was one of the leading men of the day, rapidly amassing a great fortune for the fortunes of a hundred millions had not yet come into existence. The elder Theodore was a philanthropist and a lover of outdoor life. To him more than to any one else the boy was to be indebted for a system of sane living, open air exercise after tiresome business hours, and a leaving of heavy cares for a spell of roughing it with nature. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was prominent in devising and carrying out the present system of newsboys' lodging-houses. The homelessness of many of the waifs that thronged the city streets during the Civil War appealed to him, and he got other influential men to join him in establishing a home life for the stranded atoms of childhood who were thrown upon their own poor resources. Through the expenditure of large sums of money he helped to gather together the ragged untutored dispensers of "Extras" and housed and fed them in comfort and cleanliness and put them on the road to self-respect, encouraged and protected.

He also devised and put into operation the plan of the war-time allotment commission, bringing to it a keen insight and levelheadedness that stood good for the country torn by conflicting factions,

when the issue of the struggle was uncertain, and when few of the foreign powers retained faith in a land that for the moment seemed unable to take care of itself. From his earliest childhood the young Theodore was taught the injunction to be active and industrious. His father held that no one had a right to merely cumber the earth; that the most contemptible of human beings was the man who did nothing. The child imbibed the idea that he must do something and do it well. During the war he was not hampered as were many of the children of millionaires; when he went to see the troops leave the city for the front he must walk; when he wanted a flagstaff for his flag he must make it. It was the beginning of his outdoor life which has had so much attraction for him ever since. Then came the fall of Abraham Lincoln. The boy tramped the city in company with whoever had him in charge noting the excitement, the badges of mourning; he noted the distress of those round him; his home was depressed, and the men who came to see his father were grim of visage, with few smiles for the little child they often encountered in the hall. These men would go into the library and talk long and earnestly with his father about panics and the money market-themes which were meaningless to his young ears. Years and years later he was to understand it clearly; and when he stood in the presence of the terrible work of another assassin's hand the earlier recollections were doubtless to rise before him. Touching that same time when the boy was so young, it may not be out of place to recall, when the Capitol was afterwards somber with the mourning emblems for the man whose death made Theodore Roosevelt President, an incident recalling the assassination of President Lincoln:

Among the many structures in Washington where symbols of grief have been displayed since President McKinley passed away, none attracts more attention than the unpretentious house at No. 516 Tenth Street, Northwest, where Abraham Lincoln, America's first

martyred chief magistrate, breathed his last. The emblems of mourning, although of the simplest design, give an added significance to the building, which displays at its portals the inscription that makes it one of the most revered spots in the nation's capital.

Over the old-fashioned doorway entrance to the principal floor, which is reached by a series of stone steps with a winding iron railing, is a festooned mass of crape which sweeps in broad bands down the long columns at either side of the outer vestibule and almost trails upon the threshold. In the central and southern windows of each of the main floors there depend from the sills bits of black, and through the panes of the windows on the main floor may be seen small flags trimmed with crape. In themselves these samples of the stars and stripes are insignificant, but they are cherished for their histories.

Nothing could be more eloquent than the empty flag-staff protruding from the upper northern window and covered only with tightly-wound crape. The window directly over the main doorway contains no funereal bunting or other emblem, but the yellow shade is closely drawn and it seems particularly bare. For this reason many have supposed that the immortal victim of J. Wilkes Booth died in this room. Such is not the fact, however, for Lincoln was too grievously hurt to be carried up the narrow stair by the excited men who held his unconscious form. Connected with the hallway on the main floor, in about the centre of the building, is an ordinary sleepingchamber, and to this the wounded President was borne. There he was laid on the bed of a lodger, a United States soldier, who immediately gave up his quarters to his dying commander-in-chief.

There are many living in Washington and elsewhere who recail vividly the scenes preliminary to and attending the assassination of the great liberator. The close of one of the greatest conflicts in all history had been celebrated in the national capital on the night of April 13th, 1865, by an illumination of the city that excelled any

previous demonstration held there. On that auspicious night President Lincoln addressed an immense assemblage in front of the White House, congratulating the country upon the restoration of amity and the end of the bloody Civil War. Bands of music paraded the thoroughfares, and the jubilee continued until dawn peeped over the eastern hills. There was no premonition of the tragedy impending. Jollity and congratulation held complete sway.

The rejoicing continued the following day, and in the evening President and Mrs. Lincoln attended a play at the old Ford's Theatre, on Tenth Street, Northwest, between E and F streets. This building, the front of which is yet standing without change, has been remodeled inside and serves as a branch of the records division of the War Department. To-day it flies at half-mast a ragged little flag, with a jagged hole near the centre. The same flag waved sadly in the breeze for the dead Lincoln and the martyred Garfield. It is one of the most treasured bits of tri-color in the city of Washington.

While the performance at the old theatre was in progress on the evening of April 14th, Booth, who was an actor, entered the private box in which the chief magistrate was seated and fired the fatal shot. Then he jumped to the stage, shouted "Sic semper tyrannis," fled through the stage entrance to an alley-way in the rear of the playhouse, mounted a waiting horse and made his escape. When it was realized that President Lincoln had been wounded he was hastily lifted by willing hands and borne out of the theatre on the Tenth Street side to the humble house across the way. From the moment that the bullet entered his body it was realized that there was no prospect of recovery. Mrs. Lincoln and members of the Cabinet remained at the bedside in the Tenth Street house throughout that memorable night, when all Washington was in a fever of excitement. over the crime against the President and the effort that had been made to stab. Seward.