The many-sided Roosevelt; an anecdotal biography

Front matter

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Contents

I The National Man 1

II The Developing Man 17

III The Man of Ambitions 36

II

When Mr. Roosevelt was a small boy in short trousers he used to play tag in Madison Square, New York, which was not far from his home in East Twentieth Street. It was then a much more suitable place for a small boy to play in than it is now. On the east side of the square stood a Presbyterian church. The sexton, while airing the building one Saturday, noticed a boy — it was the youthful Roosevelt — peering curiously in at the door, but making no move to enter. The sexton invited the boy inside.

"No, thank you," the little fellow replied. Then he added confidentially, "I know what you've got in there."

"I haven't anything that little boys may not see. You'd better come in and look around."

"I'd rather not," said he, after casting a sweeping and somewhat apprehensive glance around the pews and galleries. Then he ran off to his play again.

The open church seemed to fascinate him, however, and he returned to it again and again. When he went home his mother asked him about his play, and he told her that the sexton wanted him to go into the church, but that he kept out.

"Why didn't you go in ?" she asked. "It is a church, it is true, but there is no harm in entering it quietly and looking around."

He seemed reluctant to explain, but after a little urging he shyly confessed that he was afraid lest the "zeal" should jump out at him from behind a pew or from the gallery or some other place of concealment.

"The zeal ? What do you mean by the zeal ?^^ his mother inquired.

"Why," the boy explained, "I suppose it is some big animal like a dragon or an alligator. I went there to church last Sunday with Uncle R., and I heard the minister read from the Bible about the zeal, and it made me afraid."

Mrs. Roosevelt got the Concordance and read the texts containing the word "zeal," one after another. Suddenly the child's eyes grew big and his voice excited, as he exclaimed :

"That's it— the last you read."

It was from the Psalms : "For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up."

His youthful amusements were not confined to playing in Madison Square or to dodging "zeal." Indeed, when he discovered what zeal meant he seems to have decided that he believed in it, and, that he might not be charged with plagiarising the Scriptures, he decided to call it strenuosity. According to a Philadelphian who went across the ocean with him as a boy in 1869, however zealous he might be, he did not believe in wasting his energies.

"One of the first things I remember about the voyage," says the Philadelphian, "was that after the ship got out of sight of land Theodore remarked that there ought to be a good many fish in the water. Then an idea suddenly struck him, and turning to me, he said ;

" 'Go get a small rope somewhere and we'll play a fishing game.'

"I went after the line, and while I was gone he thought out all the details of the game, and had climbed on top of a coiled cable, for he was to be the fisherman.

" 'Now,' said he, as I handed him the line, 'all you fellows lie down flat on the deck here, and make believe swim around like fishes. I'll throw one end of the line down to you, and the first fellow that catches hold of it is a fish that has bit my hook. He must pull as hard as he can, and if he pulls me down off this coil of rope, why then he will be the fisherman and I will be the fish. But if he lets go, or I pull him up here off the deck, why I will still be the fisherman. The game is to see how many fish each of us can land up here. The one that catches the most fish wins.'

"The rest of us lay down flat on our stomachs, and made believe swim, and Theodore, standing above us on the coiled cable, threw down one end of the rope. My brother was the first fish to bite. Then began a mighty struggle. It would seem to be much easier for the fish to pull the fisherman down than for the fisherman to haul up the dead weight of a heavy boy lying flat on the deck below him. My brother held on to the rope with both hands and wrapped his legs around it grapevine fashion. Theodore braced his feet on the coiled cable, stiffened his back and held on, but did not pull much. Of course the fish pulled hard. He rolled over on his back, pulling and twisting, just as Theodore hoped he would do. You see, all this time, while my brother w^as using his strength, Theodore simply stood still and let him tire himself out. Before lonsf the fish was so out of breath that he could not pull any longer. Besides, the rope cut his hands and made them sore. Then the fisherman began slowly and steadily to pull on the line, and in a very few minutes he had my brother up beside him on the coil of cable."

A large part of his youth was spent at Oyster Baj^, where his permanent home now is, and the people there have many recollections of his active boyhood. It would be difficult for one to decide, perhaps even for the people themselves to tell, how much of their remembrance of his doings there is affected by their desire to recall something which gave promise of future achievement. At any rate, the tales they tell disclose characteristics of perseverance and determination, which must have manifested themselves early. An incident described by Daniel Velsor is typical of many.

Mr. Velsor was working on the bar that separates Oyster Bay harbor from Long Island Sound one day in 1873, when young Roosevelt, in a blue swimming suit, with the arms cut off at the shoulders, came up along the beach in a small boat. The wind was blowing and the waves were smacking against the small craft, sending the spray all over the boy.

He asked Mr. Velsor to help him across the bar into the sound, as he wished to row around Center Island. Mr. Velsor advised him not to attempt to go outside, as the sound was rough and a storm was threatening.

"And if anything should happen to you out there, I should be to blame if I helped you," he concluded.

"All right," the boy replied, "if you won't help me I'll have to do it myself."

He ran the bow of the boat up on the sand, jumped out, and began to haul it along, digging his bare feet into the ground to get a better purchase. At each pull the boat would move a foot or two. When the boat was about half way across Mr. Velsor decided that it would be better to save the boy's strength, as he seemed determined to go anyway, so he helped him for the rest of the way.

Young Roosevelt then tried to launch the boat, but the waves were so high that he was spilled out the first time, and both boat and boy were driven back ashore. The second attempt was no more successful than the first, but the third time he succeeded. The boat went out of sight in the trough of the waves, reappearing on their crest, but the boy managed to keep it head on. Mr. Velsor watched him till he was convinced that young Roosevelt was able to take care of himself. Then he went back to his work.

The boy was not drowned, but by all the rules of amateur seamanship he ought to have been. Besides boating at Oyster Bay, he studied botany in the fields and hunted such small game as was to be found there. He began hunting larger game in these days, too. He has written that his "first attempt at big-game shooting when a boy was 'jacking' for deer in the Adirondacks on a pond or small lake surrounded by the grand Northern forests of birch, beech, pine, spruce and fir. I killed a spike buck, and while I have never been willing to kill another in this manner, I cannot say that I regret having once had the experience. The ride over the glossy, black water, the witchcraft of such silent progress through the mystery of the night cannot but impress one." It was the kind of an experience to appeal to an imaginative youth.

He survived many other adventures, and went to college, entering Harvard University in the class of 1880, not a very strong youth, but with an unusual amount of energy. We hear of him, in 1877, as one of twelve members of the sophomore class "prominently mentioned," as the politicians say, for the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate. A committee was appointed to inquire into the fitness of the men for the places, that the board might vote with intelligence. When the editors came together to hear the reports, the man who had looked into the qualifications of young Roosevelt said :

"I cannot see that he is the kind of man we want. Although I find that he is a thoroughly good fellow and much liked by his classmates, I do not believe that he has much literary interest. He spends his spare time clipping off pieces of rock and examining strata, catching butterflies and bugs, and would, I think, be better suited for a scientific society than for us."

The board sustained this view, and instead of Roosevelt, elected a man w^ho has since won considerable fame as a writer of fiction. Later in his course, however, Mr. Roosevelt was elected to the board, but did little editorial work.

Further evidence of his early bent comes from Mr. William W. Sewall, of Island Falls, Maine, who later went West with him to his ranch on the Little Missouri River, in Dakota Territory. While still a student he was sent into the Maine woods in charge of Sewall, who was told that "he was a young college student, out of health, but gritty and headstrong." Sewall says that in those days the youth always insisted that "he was going to be a naturalist."

The reason for this purpose is doubtless found in his physical condition at the time. He sought some occupation that would not compel hiin to remain indoors, for he had determined to get a strong body, if that were possible.

"When I was a youngster," he said once, "I was pigeon-chested and asthmatic. Exercise has knocked all that out of me — exercise and being in the open air."

His hunting books show the results of his observation of nature about him. They are not mere tales of hunting. One might call them the diversions of a naturalist, so keen a love for the things of nature do they disclose. It is not the ordinary hunter or ranchman who would interrupt his story of cattle and game to write such a passage as this about song birds :

The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher order [than the plains skylark], deserving to rank with the best. Its song has length, variety, power, and rich melody ; and there is in it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness inexpressibly touching. Yet I cannot say that either song would appeal to others as it appeals to me, for to me it comes forever laden with a hundred memories and associations ; with the sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with the breath of the cold morning winds blowing across lonel}^ plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I doubt if any man can judge dispassionately of the bird songs of his own country ; he cannot disassociate them from the sights and sounds of the land that is so dear to him.

And this brief quotation from "A Trip on the Prairie" shows that he saw more than game on his hunting trips :

Getting up and loosing Manitou [his horse] to let him feed round where he wished and slake his thirst, I took the rifle, strolled up the creek valley a short distance and turned off out on the prairie. Nothing was in sight in the way of game, but overhead a skylark was singing, soaring above me so high that I could not make out his form in the grey morning light. I listened for some time, and the music never ceased for a moment, coming down clear, sweet, and tender from the air above. Soon the strains of another answered from a little distance off, and the two kept soaring and singing as long as I stayed to listen ; and when I walked away I could still hear their notes behind me.

Only a naturalist would note the small plains animals as he has done in one of the chapters in "The Wilderness Hunter." He writes that the ordinary cowboy or hunter pays little heed to the smaller birds or to many of the smaller mammals. He continues :

The prairie-dogs he cannot help noticing. With the big pack-rats also he is well acquainted, for they are handsome, with soft grey fur, large ej^es, and bushy tails; and, moreover, no one can avoid remarking their extraordinary habits of carrying to their burrows everything bright, useless and portable, from an empty cartridge-case to a skinning knife. But he knows nothing of mice, shrews, pocket gophers, or weasels ; and but little even of some large mammals with very marked characteristics. Thus I have met but one or two plainsmen who knew anything of the curious plains ferret, that rather rare weasel-like animal, which plays the same part on the plains that the mink does by the edges of all our streams and brooks, and the tree-loving sable in the cold Northern forests.

His eyes were continually alert for the unusual when on hunting excursions. Once while in the Selkirks after caribou with a hunter and an Indian guide he amused himself while resting after lunch by getting a specimen of rare animal life for a friend. He says:

I was sitting on a great stone by the edge of the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which had come up from a short flight — I can call it nothing else — underneath the water, and was singing sweetly from a spray-splashed log. Suddenly a small animal swam across the little pool at my feet. It was less in size than a mouse, and as it paddled rapidly underneath the water its body seemed flattened like a disk and was spangled with tiny bubbles like specks of silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare little beast. I sat motionless and watched both the shrew and the water-wren — water-ousel, as it should rightly be named. The latter, emboldened by my quiet, presently flew by me to a little rapids close at hand, lighting on a round stone and then slipping unconcernedly mM into the swift water. Anon he emerged, stood on another stone, and trilled a few bars, though it was late in the season for singing, and then dived into the stream again. . . . In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. It got into a little shallow eddy and caught a minute fish, which it carried to a half-sunken stone and greedily devoured, tugging voraciously at it as it held it down with its paws. Then its evil genius drove it into a small puddle alongside the brook, where I instantly pounced on it and slew it, for I knew a friend in the Smithsonian at Washington who would have coveted it greatly.

Although he did not become a professor of natural history, it is evident that his love for nature began early and continued late.

While in college he went in for athletics as well as for the other sciences, and he believed in exercise for others as well as for himself. In his sophomore year some one entered the name of his classmate, William A. Gaston, in a wrestling match in the college games without Gaston's knowledge. Gaston did not learn that he was entered until a few days before the match was to come off, and wished to withdraw, but Roosevelt persuaded him to stay in, promising to coach him. Accordingly Roosevelt hunted up fellows to wrestle with Gaston, rubbed him down after the bouts, and in general acted as his trainer. One Saturday Gaston met four other men in the gymnasium to be "tried out." He threw two of them twice, one of them once, and was thrown twice by the other one. In the final matches the victor had to throw his opponent twice out of three times. The rules, however, were rather loose then, as athletic sports were not in the present highly organised condition. In a day or two Roosevelt and Gaston learned that Gaston had been put on the final programme to wrestle with the man whom he had thrown once, as though this man were a new candidate. This did not seem fair either to the wrestler or to his trainer, and they decided to enter a protest.

As they were about to appear before the athletic committee Roosevelt said:

"You are too hot-headed, Gaston, to state the case. What it needs is cold, hard logic. Let me present the case calmly, and then we shall be more likely to win. They can't help seeing how unjust it is to make you throw that man three times, when he will win if he throws you only twice."

Roosevelt accordingly stated the case, beginning with an assumption of judicial calm, but before he got through with the discussion he had threatened to thrash two of the members of the committee. The outcome, however, was as he had predicted. The committee saw the force of his arguments and the programme was changed.

Roosevelt had considerable faith in Gaston's ability, for he backed him in a sparring bout with Ramon Guiteras, the champion middle-weight of the college. Guiteras was large and heavy, too heavy, indeed, for his class, and Gaston was a light-weight, and under weight at that. Roosevelt believed that Gaston's grit and perseverance would win over the other man's greater weight. The series of bouts in which this match occurred attracted a good deal of attention. Interest centred especially in this bout between the light-weight and the middle-weight. And there was much gratification among their friends when Roosevelt's judgment was vindicated by Gaston's victory. To this period of his life belongs what might be called the episode of the rooster. He liked fighting cocks ; whether he ever fought them does not appear, and he had some in Maine. One of the cocks escaped from its coop and wandered about the village streets, feeding as it went along. Roosevelt attempted to catch the fowl, but this was not easy, for it flew over the fences and rushed through the yards, and the faster Roosevelt ran, the more excited the fowl became, until in its terror it flew into the second-story window of a house, frightening half out of her wits an old woman who was in bed in the room. Roosevelt, instead of going in by the door, got a ladder and followed the fowl into the house by way of the window. He soon came out the same way with the bird squawking and strugghng under his arm. He said that he could not have succeeded in catching it if it had not run under the old woman's bed. He cornered it there and then crawled under and brought it out.

When he left college he went to Europe and studied in Dresden. In his spare time he took a walking tour, swimming rivers as he came to them and climbing such mountains as pleased his fancy. In recognition of his achievements in ascending the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn he was elected a member of the London Alpine Club.

On his return to the United States, he was ready to enter upon the serious work of life, with a mind well trained by the discipline of four years in college, his outlook broadened by European travel, and with a body that would respond to the demands of his will, a fine example of the man described in Juvenal's famous aphorism.

Ill

As far as the records show, Mr. Roosevelt's chief ambition has been to be of service. Just how did not matter much, as long as he accomplished something for the good of his generation. He did not consent to become a candidate for membership in the New York Legislature the year after he left college until he had been persuaded that it was his duty. The district leader who induced him to accept the nomination has said that Mr. Roosevelt objected to going into politics in that way and urged several other candidates upon him ; but before the interview was ended, the leader, acting on the suggestion of an acquaintance who knew the j'oung man thoroughly, had told him that he owed it to the city to accept the nomination.

"You go and see those other men," said Mr.

Roosevelt. "One of them ought to take the nomination, and any of them would stand a better chance of election than I would. But if they won't accept, why then maybe I'll run."

"I had him where I wanted him, then," said the leader afterward, in telling of the interview. "And I didn't trouble myself to see the other men. After a decent time I went back and told him he would have to take the nomination, and he did."

When he left college he began the study of law in the office of his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, in New York, intending to practise that profession. This uncle was nominated as a Democratic Presidential elector from the Twelfth Congressional District of New York in 1904, but declined to serve, setting forth his reasons in a letter containing this pleasant reference to his nephew : "While I differ with the President and the party with which he is associated as to certain fundamental principles of public policy, I have the highest appreciation of him personally and of his unselfish and unquestioned devotion to the public good. I feel that while he is a candidate of that party for the highest position in official life, our family relations and the strong personal affection which I have 'for him would make it improper and unbecoming in me to take any part in the approaching national canvass."

Before he had been in Robert Roosevelt's law office long enough to take his examination for admission to the bar, he was elected to the State Legislature, and he never practised law. He had ideas, however, on the way to win success at the bar, for he expressed them a few years later for the benefit of a struggling young lawyer.

"If I were you," he said, "I would hang out my shingle and get a case. I don't care how you get it. Your own wits ought to find one, at least, which no other lawyer has. I would not take a justice-shop case, either. I would find a case that was right up in the regular courts and which possessed some merit. I wouldn't take it up for nothing, either, or on a contingency. I would have a decent fee attached to it. In other words, I would have as many respectable features attached to the case as possible under the circumstances.

"Having got that case, I would try it as if it were the last case I ever expected to have or which would ever be in the courts. I would not make a nuisance of myself — you know enough to avoid that — but you can be so persistent that you will win the respect of every one who in any way comes in connection with the trial. Put all of yourself into the case. Get every side of it, and above all things, hammer it into your client by the force of your actions that your integrity is above reproach.

"When you get done with the case you will have a reputation that many lawyers devote years in other ways trying to obtain. You will find that a second case is certain to come to you whether you lose or win the first case. I would treat the second case just as I did the first one. Live and act as if there never were such a case in existence before, and master it, just as jou are required to master your studies at the law school. If jou find yourself weakening at all, use the spur and whip until you have created an enthusiasm in your work that imparts itself to client, court, and jury, and results in your victory.

"Go at the third case in the same way. And for the matter of that, as your patronage increases, give the same treatment to all your cases. You will create confidence in yourself that will insure you a constant practice, and your clients, once secured, will never leave you."

It may be worth while noting that this theory worked, for the young man put it into practice and won his first case on a technical point which all the other lawyers had overlooked. Mr. Roosevelt himself finally settled upon literature as a profession, after reaching the conclusion that there was no room in politics for such a man as he. He expressed himself on this subject quite emphatically as long ago as April, 1884, just after his remarkable triumph in the Republican State convention in Utica, New York, which elected him as one of the four delegates-at-large from the State to the national convention. He was then only twenty-five years old and had within a few months suffered a double bereavement in the death of his first wife and of his mother. Consequently this letter, which he wrote to Mr. S. N. D. North, then managing editor of the Utica Herald, is almost as remarkable as the personal triumph to which it refers.

State of New York, Assembly Chamber, Albany, April 30, 1884.

Dear Mr. North : I wish to write you a few words just to thank you for your kindness towards me, and to assure you that my head will not be turned by what I well know was a mainly accidental success. Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast dov, n or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.

I have very little expectation of being able to keep on in politics ; my success so far has only been won by absolute indifference to my future career; for I doubt if any one can realise the bitter and venomous hatred with which I am regarded by the very politicians who at Utica supported me, under dictation from masters who were influenced by political considerations that were national and not local in their scope. I realise very thoroughly the absolutel}'' ephemeral nature of the hold I have upon the people, and the very real and positive hostility I have excited among the politicians. I will not stay in public life unless I can do so on my own terms ; and my ideal, whether lived up to or not, is rather a high one.

For very many reasons I will not mind going back into private life for a few years. My work this winter has been very harassing, and I feel both tired and restless ; for the next few months I shall probably be in Dakota, and I think I shall spend the next two or three years in making shooting trips, either in the far West or in the Northern woods — and there will be plenty of work to do writing. Very truly yours,

Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1893, nine years later, he wrote another letter in a similar vein. He was then a member of the National Civil Service Commission. Since writing the first he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the mayoralty of New York, and had been devoting his time to ranching, hunting, and writing, as he had told Mr. North he expected to do. In the course of this second letter he frankly declares that "my career is that of a literary man." Here is the letter:

If a man has political foresight, who lives in a district w^here the people think as he does and where he has a great hold over them, then he can seriously go in for a continuous public career; and I suppose in such a case it is all right for him to shape his public course more or less with a view to his own continuance in office. I am a little inclined to envy a man who can look forward to a long and steady course of public service, but in my own case such a career is out of the question ; and personally it seems to me that a man's comfort and usefulness in public are greatly impaired the moment he begins to get worrying about