Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| behind did not suffer. I have never been able to make up my mind which was most like the Theodore of to-day. I guess they both were. I know that as he grew, the devotion of the one, the daring of the other, took hold of his soul and together were welded into the man, the patriot, to whom love of country is as a living fire, as the very heart’s blood of his being. |
| For play there was room in plenty in the home in which Theodore grew up; for idleness none. His father, though not rich in the sense of to-day, had money enough to enable them all to live without working if they so chose. That they should not so choose was the constant aim and care of his existence. In his scheme of life the one man for whom there was no room was the useless drone. Whether he needed it or not, every man must do some honest, decent work, and do it with his might: the community had a right to it. We catch echoes of this inheritance in his son’s writings from the very beginning, and as the Years pass they ring out more clearly. I remember his interview with Julian Ralph, when as a Police Commissioner he was stirring New York up as it |