Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| spoke of it as the honor of a lifetime to be received by President Roosevelt. |
| It is just the human feeling that levels all differences and makes kin of all who have claim to the brotherhood; searches out and lays hold of the good streak in man wherever it is found. It accounts for the patience I have known him to exercise where no one would have expected it; and it accounts, to my way of thinking, for the friendships that have existed between him and some men as far from his way of thinking in all other respects as one could well imagine. I know. I ever had a soft spot for “Paddy” Divver, with whom I disagreed in all things that touched his public life as fundamentally as that was possible. But there was a mighty good streak in “Paddy,” for all his political ill-doings. As a police judge he came as near doing ideal justice in all matters that had nothing to do with politics as any man who ever sat on the bench, and he was not bothered in his quest by the law half as much. I remember—but no, “Paddy” is dead, and the story shall remain untold. Some would not understand; but I did, for I had in mind the Kadi administering justice |