after awhile managed to get in to see me. They were rugged old fellows, as hairy as Boers and a good deal of the Boer type. They hadn't a black coat among them, and two of them wore no cravats; that is, they just had on their working clothes, but all cleaned and brushed. When they finally got to see me they explained that they hadn't anything whatever to ask, but that they believed in me, believed that I stood for what they regarded as the American ideal, and as one rugged old fellow put it, 'We want to shake that honest hand.' Now this anecdote seems rather sentimental as I tell it, and I do not know that I can convey to you the effect the incident produced on me; but it was one of the very many incidents which have occurred, and they have made me feel that I am under a big debt of obligation to the good people of this country, and that I am bound not by any unnecessary action of mine to forfeit their respect, not to hurt them by taking away any part of what they have built up as their ideal of me. It is just as I would not be willing to hurt my soldiers, to destroy my influence among men who look up to me as leader, by needlessly doing anything in battle which would give the idea that I was not personally brave; even though some given risk might seem a little unnecessary to an outsider. However certain I might be that in seeking or accepting a third term I was actuated by a sincere desire to serve my fellow countrymen, I am very much afraid that multitudes of thoroughly honest men who have believed deeply in me (and some of them, by the way, until I consented to run might think that they wished me to run) would nevertheless have a feeling of disappointment if I did try to occupy the Presidency for three

consecutive terms, to hold it longer than it was deemed wise that Washington should hold it.

"I would have felt very differently, and very much more doubtful about what to do, if my leaving the Presidency had meant that there was no chance to continue the work in which I am engaged and which I deem vital to the welfare of the people. But in Taft there was ready to hand a man whose theory of public and private duty is my own, and whose practice of this theory is what I hope mine is; and if we can elect him President we achieve all that could be achieved by continuing me in the office, and yet we avoid all the objections, all the risk of creating a bad precedent."

The President used the utmost exertion for Taft's election consistent with the dignity of his office. Taft's Democratic opponent was William J. Bryan. But he was elected receiving 321 electoral votes against 162 for Bryan and a plurality of over 1,269,000 in the popular vote.

"Toward the end of his term (the second) the relations between Roosevelt and Congress became somewhat strained," wrote Charles G. Washburn, a member of the House at this time and a devoted friend of Roosevelt's. "This was due to a variety of causes. The President was, very properly, constantly pressing an elaborate programme of legislation. Congress could never meet his expectations or the expectations of the people, and the legislative body came to feel that its efforts were not properly appreciated and that the Executive held a place in the confidence of the people that properly belonged to Congress. The President preferred pretty direct

methods to the arts of diplomacy. I think that the country rather enjoyed his controversies with Congress and as a rule sided with him." 1

Whoever writes the story of Roosevelt's seven and one-half years of administration must necessarily recount that part of his life, for he so pervaded the administration that the two are essentially one. At the outset we must bear in mind what William H. Taft wrote of him in 1919: Theodore Roosevelt was "the most commanding, the most original, the most interesting and the most brilliant personality in American public life since Lincoln." 2 He was all of that and a man also of signal ability. One gets an idea of a man from a long personal and friendly acquaintance and in bearing my testimony I represent simply that of a thousand others in writing that in all my life I have never met one personally with whose ability I have been so impressed.

Roosevelt was a loveable man. He loved children and children were at once attracted to him; he gained their confidence and made on them a lasting impression. His letters to his own children show the relation of a father that many would gladly imitate, but imitation of Theodore Roosevelt was impossible. The President playing bear with his youngest daughter in an upper hall of the White House surprised a martinet on a visit who could not comprehend how a man dealing with the most serious affairs of life could so unbend. Roosevelt could do it in the most natural manner but it is impossible to conceive any other President who occupied the White House indulging in such a playful episode.

1 P. 138.

Life of Roosevelt, Lewis, xxii.

Children are better than books, he said. He preached continually to women their duty of bearing children. In a noble tribute to the farm and farmer he pleaded that the life of the farmer should be made happier and so the drift to the city stopped; nevertheless he declared, "There is plenty that is hard and rough and disagreeable in the necessary work of actual life." He laid emphasis on the fact that the men who tilled the soil fed and clothed the towns and cities; but "the best crop is the crop of children." 1

Roosevelt was, in the most appropriate sense of the word, a bookish man. "I find reading a great comfort," he wrote to Sir George O. Trevelyan.2 The list of books that he had read within two years that he furnished Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler and his discussion with Sir George O. Trevelyan of Ferrero's "La Grandeur et Décadence de Rome" are amazing from a man in the presidential office. He joined in the present of a silver loving cup to Trevelyan inscribed, "To the Historian of the American Revolution from his friends - Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and Elihu Root." Trevelyan's History struck him as one of the very few histories that can be called great and after a re-reading of it he came to the conclusion that the historian "had painted us a little too favorably." Roosevelt, wrote Lawrence F. Abbott, who knew him intimately, "was a voracious and omniverous reader." He was likewise

4

1 Review of Reviews ed., 1291 et ante; also 1531.

Bishop, ii. 142.

Bishop, i. 265, ii. 144, 163, 166.

Impressions, 183. He published at least 30 books. His life of Gouverneur Morris contains about 60,000 words; his African Game Trails, about 200,000. Making an average of 75,000 words, he wrote 2,250,000

a rapid one but his quick perusal did not prevent his seizing upon the salient points of any book. He discussed Henry Osborne Taylor's "Medieval Mind" with a scholar in terms common to them both. He desired to read all that was written about the Mongols. He was a great admirer of Morley's "Gladstone." He was fond of Milton, being especially attracted to his prose. He told Sir George Trevelyan that he had been reading Tacitus and further said, "You who are so blessed as to read all the best of the Greeks or Latins in the original must not look down too scornfully upon us who have to make believe that we are contented with Emerson's view of translations." Apparently he knew well Greek life, as he was disposed to agree with Galton in placing the average Athenian in point of intellect "above the average civilized man of our countries." 2 An author knows his own book best and I confess my delight at his knowledge of my fifth volume which I knew he had thoroughly read amid many distractions. His reference to Martin Chuzzlewit in a speech at Cairo, Illinois, on October 3, 1907 exhibited the fullness of the presidential mind. The region where we are now standing, he said, was the seat of Dickens's forlorn "Eden." "It would be simply silly to be angry over 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' on the contrary, read it, be amused by it, profit by it; and don't be misled by it." I was surprised at his knowledge of a recent "Life of Fessenden" whence he derived an animated and full account of the Cabinet crisis of 1862.

words in permanent literary form. It is estimated that during his governorship and Presidency he wrote 150,000 letters; on an average of 100 words to the letter this amounts to 15 million words. Ibid., 169.

1

2 Bishop, i. 268. Bishop, ii. 154, 160. 3 See Mrs. Robinson, 219.