"The true welfare of the nation is indissolubly bound up with the welfare of the farmer and the wage-worker; of the man who tills the soil, and of the mechanic, the handicraftsman, the laborer. The poorest motto upon which an American can act is the motto of "some men down," and the safest to follow is that of "all men up." A good deal can and ought to be done by law. For instance, the State and, if necessary, the Nation should by law assume ample power of supervising and regulating the acts of any corporation (which can be but its creatures), and generally of those immense business enterprises which exist only because of the safety and protection to property guaranteed by our system of Government. Yet it is equally true that, while this power should exist, it should be used sparingly and with self-restraint. Modern industrial competition is very keen between nation and nation, and now that our country is striding forward with the pace of a giant to take the leading position in the international industrial world, we should beware how we fetter our limbs, how we cramp our Titan strength. Here in this exposition, on the stadium and on the pylons of the bridge, you have written certain sentences to which we must live up to if we are in any way or measure to do our duty: 'Who shuns the dust and sweat of the contest, on his brow falls not the cool shade of the olive,' and 'A free state exists only in the virtue of the citizen.' We all accept these statements in theory; but if we do not live up to them in practice, then there is no health in us. Take the two together always. In our eager, restless life of effort, but little can be done by that cloistered virtue of which Milton spoke with such fine contempt. We need the rough, strong qualities that make a man fit to play his part well among men. Yet we need to remember even more that no ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us."

In his Vermont Veterans' Union oration, Colonel Roosevelt spoke especially to "members of the Grand Army, which saved the Union." He said:

"Other men by their lives or their deaths have kept unstained our honor, have wrought marvels for our interest, have led us forward to triumph, or warded off disaster from us; other men have marshaled our ranks upward across the stony slopes of greatness. But you did more, for you saved us from annihilation. We can feel proud of what others did only because of what you did. It was given to you, when the mighty days came, to do the mighty deeds, for which the days called, and if your deeds had been left undone, all that had been already accomplished would have turned into apples of Sodom under our teeth. The glory of Washington and the majesty of Marshall would have crumbled into meaningless dust if you and your comrades had not buttressed their work with your strength of steel, your courage of fire. The Declaration of Independence would now sound like a windy platitude, the Con

stitution of the United States would ring as false as if drawn by the Abbe Sieyes in the days of the French Terror, if your stern valor had not proved the truth of the one and made good the promise of the other. In our history there have been other victorious struggles for right, on the field of battle and in civic strife. To have failed in these other struggles would have meant bitter shame and grievous loss. But you fought in the one struggle where failure meant death and destruction to our people; meant that our whole past history would be crossed out of the records of successful endeavor with the red and black lines of failure; meant that not one man in all this wide country would now be holding his head upright as a free citizen of a mighty and glorious republic.

"All this you did, and therefore you are entitled to the homage of all men who have not forgotten in their blindness either the awful nature of the crisis, or the worth of priceless service rendered in the hour of direst need.

"You have left us the right of brotherhood with the gallant men who wore the gray in the ranks against which you are pitted. At the opening of this new Century, all of us, the children of a reunited country, have a right to glory in the countless deeds of valor done alike by the men of the North and the men of the South. We can retain an ever-growing sense of the all-importance, not merely to our people but to mankind, of the Union victory, while giving the freest and heartiest recognition to the sincerity and self-devotion of those Americans, our fellow-countrymen, who then fought against the stars in their courses. Now there is none left, North or South, who does not take joy and pride in the Union; and when three years ago we once more had to face a foreign enemy, the heart of every true 'American thrilled with pride to see veterans who had fought in the Confederate uniform once more appear under Uncle Sam's colors, side by side with their former foes, and leading to victory. under the famous old flag the sons both of those who had worn the blue and of those who had worn the gray."

Mr. Roosevelt's Minneapolis speech, September 5th, has, from its co-incidences and associations, become so thoroughly known that space can be filled with coin from the same mint that has not been worn by circulation.

CHAPTER XI.

SEEN IN HIS STUDIES AND IDEALS.

Reflections of Himself in Writings and His Heroes-He Gives His Confidences in Glowing Pages-Washington, Lincoln and Grant, Three Pre-eminently Great Men-Aspirations Revealed in His Laudations-He Corrects a First ImpressionLoves Cowboys, but "There Are Others"-How He Became a Remote RanchmanAnecdotes of Bravery and Generous Deeds.

was

N studying the character of President Roosevelt, we must pursue his course of study, for in it was developed his character. As a boy he was instructed by his father to develop himself, and arrived at Harvard a youth with striking outlines of originality. He had an early glimpse of the beauties and wonders of botany, and felt it was worthy the devotion of his life; but as he cultivated himself, a self-made man, so that he felt the stir of energies and joy of labor and strife, he had a passion for athletic exercise, and to go afield and be a hunter. He turned from botany to mathematics, and reached the highest grade of measurement. He hastened to be a while in the Old World. The charm of antiquity enveloped him, and he saw the heart of Europe, illustrating the force of his aspirations by climbing the most difficult and dangerous mountains in Switzerland. Instead of lingering abroad, he hurried home, and took a "header" into politics. He comprehended that it was a glorious thing to be an American. He gained better knowledge of Europe with his own eyes, than he could get from books. He was attracted to public life, and his hand to hand combat with the spoilers in the Legislature, followed by the broader field offered in the National Republican Convention, gave him, at the age of twentysix, a national reputation.

Though Chairman of the Delegation of New York, he could not cast the solid vote of the State. It was the sticking point of reform in those days that the vote of the State need not be solid; that it was rather a reproach upon a delegation to vote all the time solid. The reformer developed individuality rather than unity. The vote of New York at this time was divided, and the roll was repeatedly called, that each delegate might "toe" his own mark and "show his hand;" that is, both the feet on which he stood and the hands he played. In this situation, the young Chairman's name was prominent in the

record. His terms in the Assembly of his State had given him conspicuity as a hard hitter.

The spot where there was great need of a fighting champion of the people was New York City, and the young Assemblyman resolved to undertake the task, was nominated for Mayor; and ran on the regular Republican ticket. The candidates were Hewitt, Henry George and Roosevelt. A heavy vote the latter might have received, was thrown successfully to Hewitt to beat George. All the candidates were honorable men, but George's land theories caused alarm.

The mother and wife of Roosevelt died, and he withdrew from the accustomed turmoil of the metropolis. He preferred the changes of scenery and diversity of associations encountered in the wilderness. Here he became a Rough Rider, meaning in his case an accomplished horseman, and a mighty hunter for the game the wildest country on the continent afforded. The buffalo no longer roamed in great herds over the succulent but hardy grass named for the ponderous animal; but there were herds of stately elk and the delightful deer-that got their name in Virginia, and were almost co-extensive with the soil that produces Indian corn-the bounding antelope, that outmatches the "gay gazelles on Judah's hills," the goat that is white as snow, and at home on the snowy peaks; the mountain lions, the fierce cougars, the gaunt gray wolves and the coyotes-the smaller mischief maker of the prairies-and above all, the bears of all shades, from the giant grizzly to the darker, smaller and milder editions of the same beast.

Columbus did not discover for him a newer world when he struck Cuba and had faith it was Cipango, than Roosevelt found in Ranchland. Deep in the American mountains most remote from the Atlantic, the sources of the Nile of the Hemisphere called Western before the world was rounded in human experience, he found the people most truly American, the expanders of our frontiers and embodiments of our typical countrymen, answering to the vital air and the fertile land, the vast rivers and broad horizons, from which come the bone and sinew, the strength and spirit of the men who have assimilated the best blood of the Old World; and the "let independence be your boast"-men who are the advance guard of our Manifest Destiny.

It was the New World of the Great Nation of the Greater America of the more modern Hemisphere-the American Nation that has outgrown all other Nations, and fronted on the two oceans-the Atlantic, looking toward Europe, and on the Pacific meeting Asia face to face-just at the time when our great States found it was better to be of a great than a small "Empire for Liberty," and when the transcontinental railroads defined the road to Asia, and prepared for the canal across the American isthmus, that in return is to guide the trade and travel, the broad wings of commerce and the roads of steel, surrounding

the globe in the tropics, realizing the prophecy of the ever westward emigration and the trade winds.

It was at this epoch that Theodore Roosevelt expanded his ideas of the Americans of America, and in their atmosphere finished the schooling for his great hereafter, leaving, though, to the last the final touch of the actualities of war. He was suddenly initiated into the life of the land of the coming time, and in tone with the people. The man of the metropolis and the university, the representative of an old and cultivated family, with a name the pride of the Knickerbockers, and the society of the affluent, scored the point that the least tender-footed of all men was the one who in his youth had seen other lands and people than this, and with the arts of science softened the rudeness of the strong; and the traveled and scholastic author paid this tribute to the cowboys, who were natural to the Cattle Country, but had not been native, because they hadn't had the time out there. He said:

"Everywhere among these plainsmen and mountain-men, and more important than any, are the cowboys-the men who follow the calling that has brought such towns into being. Singly, or in twos and threes, they gallop their wiry little horses down the street, their lithe, supple figures erect or swaying slightly as they sit loosely in the saddle; while their stirrups are so long that their knees are hardly bent, the bridles not taut enough to keep the chains from clanking. They are smaller and less muscular than the wielders of ax and pick, but they are as hardy and self-reliant as any men who ever breathed-with bronzed, set faces, and keen eyes that look all the world straight in the face without flinching as they flash out from under the broad-brimmed hats. Peril and hardship, and years of long toil broken by weeks of brutal dissipation, draw haggard lines across their eager faces, but never dim their reckless eyes nor break their bearing of defiant self-confidence. They do not walk well, partly because they so rarely do any work out of the saddle, partly because their chaperajos, or leather overalls, hamper them when on the ground; but their appearance is striking for all that, and picturesque, too, with their jingling spurs, the big revolvers stuck in their belts, and bright silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely round their necks over the open collars of their flannel shirts."

There is a refined wisdom about this that is rare in those who count their years in the early forties, and one goes on to read his estimation of great men with a curious stimulation of interest. A young man who assigns himself to his place and tells how he grew as a tree, and put forth new leaves in their season, has given vouchers that he can draw likenesses and evolution other than his own, with a lead pencil. Governor Roosevelt, April 27, 1900, in his address at the Grant Anniversary, Galena, Illinois, names the three great men of all time in our country, as he sees and sketches.