Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| then that he was alone and that the burden was upon him, and I felt always as if, upon some pretext, any pretext, I would like to get him away where he could be by himself for a while. The other, curiously, was an old campaign poster from the days when he ran for Governor. It hung over my desk till the boys in the office, who used to decorate the volunteers’ slouch-hat with more bows than a Tyrolese swain ever wore to the village fair, made an end of it, to my great grief. For it was the only picture of him I ever saw that had the smile his friends love. There was never another like it. And it is for them only. I have come into a room packed full of people crowding to speak with him, and seen it light up his face as with a ray of sunshine from a leaden sky, and his hand go up in the familiar salute I meet out West nowadays, but nowhere else. Odd how people, even those who should know him well, can misunderstand. “I saw him several times in Colorado,” wrote one who likes him, after his recent Western trip, “and he pleased me very much by his growing tenderness toward men and animals. His chief weakness has always seemed to me his almost cruel strength.” To |