Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 319
| him, and it is a very good one. I wish I could have shown you him one morning last summer when, having vainly chased the President and all the children, he laid siege to Archie in his hammock. Archie was barelegged and prudently stayed where he was, but the hammock hung within a few inches of the grass. Josiah promptly made out a strategic advantage there, and went for the lowest point of it with snapping jaws. Archie’s efforts to shift continuously his center of gravity while watching his chance to grab the badger by its defenseless back, was one of the funniest performances I ever saw. Josiah lost in the end. |
| The President himself teaches his boys how to shoot; he swims with them in the cove and goes with them on long horseback rides, starting sometimes before sunrise. On fine days, as often as he can get away, luncheon is packed in the row-boat and he takes the whole family rowing to some distant point on the shore, which even the secret service men have not discovered, and there they spend the day, the President pulling the oars going and coming. Or else he takes Mrs. Roosevelt alone on a little jaunt, and these two, over whose honeymoon |