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CHAPTER IV.

A NEW YORK ASSEMBLYMAN.

AT ONCE ATTRACTS ATTENTION TO HIMSELF AS AN UNCOMPROMISING FOE TO MACHINE RULE, AND A FRIEND OF GOOD GOVERNMENT-STRIKING PROMISE OF A REMARKABLE PUBLIC CAREER -NOT EVEN THE DANGER OF BODILY VIOLENCE COULD DETER HIM A REVELATION TO THE ROWDIES.

Mr. Roosevelt had scarcely returned home when his friends asked him to become their candidate for election to a seat in the legislature from the Twenty-first Assembly district of the State. It was not wholly distasteful to him in prospect, for the Roosevelts had been identified with public affairs for nearly two centuries; and, besides, he hungered for the activity which political life was likely to bring.

But there was a motive still stronger than this, and one that seems to have moved him generally in his actions through life. In the career which this promised service in the legislature could open to him, he saw the opportunity to do some good for his fellows. He was a wide-awake

man, a man of the world-so far as his years went, and uncommonly well-informed on practical affairs. He knew that really disinterested government was not wholly the object of the lawmaking powers. He knew there was corruption in the halls of the assembly at Albany, and that even the public conscience of his own city-the aristocratic portions as well as those less pretentious-was not of the sterling quality that it should be. He knew there was much shameless corruption in the tenement districts; but he was one of the first to use that scalding term, "the wealthy criminal classes."

He had a theory that, however great the difficulties encountered, up there at Albany or anywhere else, the man who met them with honesty, resolution and common sense would be pretty likely to conquer. And he loved to conquerif only the opposition to be overcome were sufficiently strong.

The interesting thing about the whole proposition was that his fight began at the very outset of his political career. He was of that Murray Hill district which was then the name for all exclusiveness and propriety. But the district had long been the political possession of a ring

in his own party which did not permit independence of action any more than did the less decorous rulers of the Bowery. No Democrat had the ghost of a chance for election from Murray Hill; but, similarly, no Republican had ever gone from there to the legislature at Albany with independence enough and character enough to leave his name in the memory of a single citizen. And it was understood very well by the gentlemen who had so skilfully manipulated the primaries and the polls that this man Roosevelt was not the person they wanted in the legislature. They did not like his square jaw. They remembered or heard of the Roosevelts of the past, and knew it was not a pleasant name to conjure against. They particularly deprecated his habit of thinking for himself instead of coming to ward headquarters every morning and asking what opinions were to be entertained for the day.

So the "managers" were against him.

That is why his conflict in politics began with the beginning of his political life.

The first thing he did was to effect the overthrow of that corrupt coterie of politicians who had been sending vapid and inefficient men to the assembly from the Murray Hill district.

These had been in no sense representative of that excellent electorate; but they had been exceedingly convenient for the men who sent them to Albany. Mr. Roosevelt went at the matter with the directness that was part of his nature. The laws gave him the right to rally his friends and supporters at the primaries; and before the old managers were aware of their peril they had exercised that commonly unused privilege of American citizenship, and had expressed their will in the selection of a candidate. Mr. Roosevelt was nominated.

Then he was elected. That was by no means difficult. And the men who had been managing. affairs political in Murray Hill found a stronger man at the helm. Their occupation was gone. As they had opposed him, of course it was hopeless to command him. It was equally useless to try to bully him. That was discovered at the very outset. And, these things being true, it was beyond probability that they could buy him. So that, in a period of great corruption, a pure man and a strong man took his seat in the legislature.

There was an added motive for commendable action at the time. It has been stated that in his boyhood he was the playmate of Edith Carow,

and that they grew up with the avowed purpose of uniting their fortunes when they should come to maturity-when they should have passed school days, and the world should be their own.

But while a student at Harvard he had met Miss Alice Lee, of Boston; and an attachment sprang up between them which ripened into that profound regard in which the lives of a man and a woman are bound in a perfect union. And in the recess following his first term in the legislature, Mr. Roosevelt and Miss Lee were married. It was a most happy union, and the following year a daughter was born to them. But in 1883, while serving his third-and last-term in the legislature, Mrs. Roosevelt died; and it seemed to her bereaved husband that one of his main incentives to a strenuous life had been taken from him. His mother's death in the following year cast another pall upon his spirit, and the conflicts of men appeared for the first time valueless.

He remained a member of the assembly for three terms. In that time he sat with bankers and bricklayers, with merchants and mechanics, with lawyers, farmers, day-laborers, saloonkeepers and prize-fighters. Every interest in the great State was represented-even those of the

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