Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| had laid its rude hand and put all the flowers to sleep; only the wild thyme I brought down from the Berkshire Hills stands green and fragrant, as does the sunny field where I dug it, in my memory ever. A whole week have I walked about among the bare bushes, poking in the dead leaves, trying to think how. Something very learned and grand had come into my head. But how can you analyze your friend? Men’s minds and men’s motives you may analyze, if you care and have a taste that way,—and a pretty mess you will make of it more than half the time. But resolve a sun-beam, or a tear, into its original elements, and what do you get? So much oxygen, perhaps; so much salt—let the chemist tell in his learned phrase; and when all is told your sunbeam and your tear have escaped you. Whatever else you have, them you have not. No, I shall not try that. I shall tell you of him just as I knew him. I like him best that way, anyhow,—just as he is. |
| But first let me give fair warning: if there be any among my readers still-hunting for special privilege, let him get off right here; for he won’t like him. Whether it be the Trust |