Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| to hear and cannot hear too long or too often. I don’t think that he could keep a scrap-book, if he tried. I am sure he could not. It is not given to man once in a thousand years to make and to record history at the same time. But then it is not his business to keep scrap-books. I know he cannot dance, for I have seen a letter from a lady who reminded him of how he “trod strenuously” on her toes in the old dancing-school days when the world was young. And I have heard him sing—that he cannot do. The children think it perfectly lovely, but he would never pass for an artist. And when the recruit in camp accosted him with “Say, are you the Lieutenant-Colonel? The Colonel is looking for you,” he did not order him under arrest or jab him with his sword, but merely told him to “Come with me and see how I do it”; which was quite irregular, of course, if it did make a soldier out of a raw recruit. Oh, yes! I suppose he has his faults, though all these years I have been so busy finding out good things in him that were new to me, that I have never had time to look for them. But when I think of him, gentle, loyal, trusting friend, helpful, unselfish ever, |