Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| magazine article, or a chapter in one of his books where he left off the day before. In five minutes he would be deep in the feudal days, or disentangling some Revolutionary kink in Washington’s time, and seemingly had lost all recollection of Mulberry Street and its concerns. In the midst of it there would come a rap at the door and a police official would enter with some problem to be solved. Roosevelt would stop in the doorway, run rapidly over it with him, decide it, unless it needed action by the Board, and after one nervous turn across the floor would resume dictating in the middle of the sentence where he had stopped. I used to listen in amazement. It would have taken me hours of fretting to get back to where I was. |
| One secret laugh I had at him in those days. The room was a big square one, with windows that had blue shades. When he got thoroughly into his dictation—during which he never permitted me to leave; he would stay any movement of mine that way with a detaining gesture, and go right on—he made, unconsciously, a three-fourths round of the office, and when he passed each window would seize the shadecord |