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

2

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. 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." 3 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.

2 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.

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

This was in 1908 when I was invited to make him a visit to hear his criticism of my vi and vii volumes. After luncheon at the White House he asked his cousin W. Emlen Roosevelt, Francis D. Millet, Clifford Richardson and myself to accompany him on the rear veranda of the White House. In your last work, he said, you have stepped down from your impartial judgment seat of the earlier volumes and become something of an advocate. During the Civil War you held the scales even, and while you have perhaps properly criticised the North for her Reconstruction policy you have not blamed the South for the course she took that made radical measures possible. Her conduct prevented any proper policy. I am inclined to think that the XIV amendment plan was the best proposed.

It was a fine day and stimulated by the air and the success of his Conservation Conference, which was just ending, he talked freely and well. I blame E. L. Godkin and Carl Schurz, he declared, because after having supported the negro suffrage policy, they condemned the results of it. It was all right if they had avowed their mistake but that they did not do. They still held to the negro suffrage policy as being the best. Even now the Evening Post condemns the President's action in the Brownsville, Texas matter from purely sentimental reasons. The negro has been hurt, therefore the President is wrong. But Carl Schurz and The Nation never stimulated the best young men to go into politics and they never had any influence with the crowd.

It was perhaps all right, he continued, for you to say that Carl Schurz was almost an ideal senator, but on that level you failed to do justice to Oliver P. Morton. Roose

velt then told with great spirit and enthusiasm Morton's course during the Civil War, speaking of the Copperheads as bitterly as if he had been their personal antagonist. It was the appreciation of one fighter by another. The men at the East, he said, have books written about them in good literary style; they receive the adulation of writers and so get a larger share of commendation than they are entitled to. When talking of Morton the President said to his cousin, Because Winslow, Lanier & Co. advanced money to Morton in his time of trouble I am disposed to forgive a member of their firm for saying that I am crazy, indulge immoderately in drink and furthermore that I am an opium fiend.

There is no foundation whatever for any of the financier's alleged charges; that of immoderate indulgence in drink has lasted the longest but has finally been set to rest. The truth is that he rarely drank at luncheon and that when he drank wine at dinner, he drank with the moderation of a gentleman and never to excess.1

Next morning the President continued his talk: I have not gained the support of the cultivated class and there are points where I should have done so. But I have received the support of the plain people, of the "one suspender men." And yet I have done things that might have aroused a demagogic feeling. I have shut the people out from the White House grounds in the rear; I have stopped the public receptions and have done a great deal in the limitation of others.

The relations of some of the cultivated class with men of wealth were close and it may be regretted that so much

1 See Bishop, i. 118.