Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| in the gate, and this fellow needed that kind if the law was powerless to reach him. |
| I told the President when, at his recent visit to Ellis Island, he had personally heard the case of a woman detained under the rules, but whom my friend on the police bench would have discharged with a ten-dollar bill in her pocket, that his judgment was almost equal to “Paddy’s,” whereat he laughed in amusement, for our dealings—“Paddy’s” and mine—had been the cause of his poking fun at me before. But when I told him of what befell me in Chicago on a visit there, he said he should presently have to cut my acquaintance, and I was bound to agree with him. I had gone to the ball of the Hon. Bath-house John’s constituents, to see the show; and when their great leader heard of my being from New York, nothing was too good for me. Evidently, he took me for “one of the b’ys,” for when the champagne had opened wide the flood-gates of liberality and companionship, he addressed me confidentially in this wise: |
| “B’y, the town is yours! Take it in. Go where ye like; do with it what ye like. And if ye run up against trouble—ye know, the |