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PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.

IT

T is a pleasure to say the author of this book has found the material for it of extraordinary interest. The President's ancestors may be traced in events for many generations. Their records are of authenticity, and their reputations, honorable. There is ample information of the families of Theodore Roosevelt's father and mother. On both sides they appear in public affairs with distinction, with a spirit of adventure and of generosity, in works of charity, and enterprises of integrity and usefulness.

The sources of information consulted and quoted, yield history at every step of investigation, and the first surprise is that with less than twenty-five years of manhood, the President has done so much, and that his good labors are so many and varied. His work as an Assemblymen in New York, was greater than that of any man of like years and opportunities. He earned his winnings in every field. It is but twenty-five years ago that his courage and ability gave him rare prominence in state legislation and national politics; and before he sought the Wild West as a new world, he was a man of reputation, broad as the country, and biographical material appears in public records— those of the Assembly and of Conventions-an attempt to grasp the municipal government of the City of New York, that failed because his competitors for the Mayoralty were Abram Hewitt and Henry George.

He had hardly reached manhood, when he was a competent writer of history, and he is to-day the most reliable of the historians of our wars with England, of the early celebrities of the City of New York, and of the Winning of the West, a work that would make him famous if he had done nothing else conspicuous. He told the world how the Great West became the heart of our country. His education in public trusts was in the Civil Service Commission of the Nation and the Police Commission of New York. No more difficult tasks could have been selected, and while his success was imperfect, his impressions upon the situations were those of marked improvement, indelible and indestructible. He became an enthusiastic toiler in the Navy, and his works there were excellent and most apt. He put the fighting edge on the American warships. Then came his war service in the Army, with an element of power that he chiefly discovered or invented and exclusively

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applied. His reports, letters, testimony before boards, would crowd many volumes with matter of value, before the great office of Governor of New York was placed in his hands, and his personal record in that position is told in his volumes of public papers, one for each year he held the high office. The history of the country will not be written again without many references to those admirable books and liberal quotations from them. His speeches and orations as Vice President, and his twenty-two thousand mile journey through twenty-two States, appealing to the people wherever the combat thickened in 1900, closed with the vindication of New York through the courage and power of the Governor of the State, and her contribution to a national victory.

Through this immensity of public care and political experience, Mr. Roosevelt was an unwearied workingman in literature. There are twenty volumes to his credit, all making known our country to our countrymen, not only the great game animals of America introduced to Americans, but appreciation of our resources made known to the world, and a higher intelligence of them familiar to the people at large.

The light of the lamps that reveal the experiences of the past, will guide us aright in tracing the footsteps and following the example of the President in the future.

THE PUBLISHERS.

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