Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
Page 259
| up the general government with men and money to a practically unlimited extent. For all its motley population, there is a most wholesome underlying spirit of patriotism in the city, if it can only be roused. Few will question this who saw the great processions on land and water, and the other ceremonies attendant upon the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The vast crowds which thronged the streets were good-humored and orderly to a degree, and were evidently interested in much more than the mere spectacular part of the celebration. They showed by every action their feeling that it was indeed peculiarly their celebration; for it commemorated the hundred years’ duration of a government which, with many shortcomings, had nevertheless secured order and enforced law, and yet was emphatically a government of the people, giving to the workingman a chance which he has never had elsewhere. In all the poorer quarters of the city, where the population was overwhelmingly of foreign birth or origin, the national flag, the stars and stripes, hung from every window, and the picture of Washington was displayed wherever there was room. Flag and portrait alike were tokens that those who had come to our shores already felt due reverence and love for the grand memory of the man who, more than any other, laid the |