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Courtesy of Underwood and Underwood The energy and latent action, the rational thought, the controlled will, the moral force-that was Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) He denied himself all things that weaken. He gave his life to work and to whatever circumstances brought in the way of private and public duty and private and public fellowship. "Work, duty, and fellowship"-he preached them and lived them with the zeal of a prophet, and they pretty much make the message he leaves us: "work" and "duty," the basis of moral force in man or nation, the iron qualities on which the United States were founded; "fellowship," a key to an understanding of our neighbor and a melting pot for class differences. He believed in the "joy of life also, but not merely the old primeval heritage, and never pleasure sought as such, but, instead, that achievement which comes as a by-product of work faithfully done, lack of self-seeking, trust in the good in one's fellow men, and knowledge of nature NATURAL HISTORY VOLUME XIX JANUARY, 1919 Theodore Roosevelt' HIS AMERICANISM REACHED IN TO THE MARROW OF HIS BONES By JOHN BURROUGHS N' EVER before in my life has it been so hard for me to accept the death of any man as it has been for me to accept the death of Theodore Roosevelt. I think I must have unconsciously felt that his power to live was unconquerable. Such unbounded energy and vitality impressed one like the perennial forces of nature. I cannot associate the thought of death with him. He always seemed to have an unlimited reserve of health and power. Apparently he cared no more for the bullet which that would-be assassin shot into his breast a few years ago than for a fleabite. From his ranch days in Montana to the past year or two I saw and was with him many times in many places. In the Yellowstone Park in the spring of 1903, in his retreat in the woods of Virginia during the last term of his presidency, at Oyster Bay at various times, in Washington at the White House, and at my place on the Hudson, I have felt the arousing and stimulating impact of his wonderful personality. When he came into the room it was as if a strong wind had blown the door open. You felt his radiant energy before he got halfway up the stairs. NUMBER 1 When we went birding together it was ostensibly as teacher and pupil, but it often turned out that the teacher got as many lessons as he gave. Early in May, during the last term of his presidency, he asked me to go with him to his retreat in the woods of Virginia, called "Pine Knot," and help him name his birds. Together we identified more than seventy-five species of birds and wild fowl. He knew them all but two, and I knew them all but two. He taught me Bewick's wren and one of the rarer warblers, and I taught him the swamp sparrow and the pine warbler. A few days before he had seen Lincoln's sparrow in an old weedy field. On Sunday after church, he took me there and we loitered around for an hour, but the sparrow did not appear. Had he found this bird again, he would have been one ahead of me. The one subject I do know, and ought to know, is the birds. is the birds. It has been one of the main studies of a long life. He knew the subject as well as I did, while he knew with the same thoroughness scores of other subjects of which I am entirely ignorant. He was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also. In the Yellowstone Park when I was with him, he carried no gun, but one This article, in part, was read before the Roosevelt Memorial Meeting at the Century Club, New York City, February 9, by Major George Haven Putnam get his paw so caught in a tin can that he cannot get it off and of course great pain and injury follow. Buffalo Jones was sent with another scout to capture, tie up and cure these bears. He roped two and got the can off of one, but the other tore himself loose, can and all, and escaped. Think of the grizzly bear of the early Rocky Mountain hunters and explorers, and then think of the fact that part of the recognized duties of the scouts in the Yellowstone Park at this moment is to catch this same grizzly bear and remove tin cans from the bear's paws in the bear's interest! The grounds of the White House are lovely now, and the most decorative birds in them are some red-headed woodpeckers. Give my regards to Mrs. Burroughs. How I wish I could see you at Slabsides! But of course this summer there is no chance of that. [Signed] Always yours, ... THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Roosevelt was a many-sided man and every side was like an electric battery. Such versatility, such vitality, such thoroughness, such copiousness, have rarely been united in one man. He was not only a full man, he was also a ready man and an exact man. He could bring all his vast resources of power and knowledge to bear upon a given subject instantly. Courageous, confident, self-assertive, he was yet singularly tender and sympathetic. He was an autocratic democrat. "Hail fellow well met" with teamsters, mechanics, and cowboys, he could meet kings and emperors on their own ground. A lover of big-game hunthe was a naturalist before he was a sportsman. His Americanism reached in to the marrow of his bones. I could never get him interested in that other great American,-one more strictly of the people. than he was-Walt Whitman. Whitman's democracy was too rank and unrelieved to attract him. The Rooseveltian strenuousness and austerity and high social ideals stood in the way. |