Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| foundation of our government; and that they already challenged as their own American nationality and American life, glorying in the Nation’s past and confident in its future. |
| In science and art, in musical and literary development, much remains to be wished for; yet something has already been done. The building of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of the American Museum of Natural History, of the Metropolitan Opera House, the gradual change of Columbia College into a University,—all show a development which tends to make the city more and more attractive to people of culture; and the growth of literary and dramatic clubs, such as the Century and the Players, is scarcely less significant. The illustrated monthly magazines—the Century, Scribner’s, and Harper’s—occupy an entirely original position of a very high order in periodical literature. The greatest piece of literary work which has been done in America, or indeed anywhere, of recent years, was done by a citizen of New York,—not a professed man of letters, but a great General, an ex-President of the United States, writing his memoirs on his death-bed, to save his family from want. General Grant’s book has had an extraordinary sale among the people at large, though even yet hardly appreciated at its proper worth by the critics; and it is scarcely too high praise to say that, both because of the |