Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| I have n’t forgotten the potatoes I roasted by the brook in the wood-lot when I was a boy. No such potatoes grow nowadays. |
| Afterward, they sit around the fire, wrapped in blankets, and tell bear-stories and ghost-stories, while the children steal furtive glances at the shadows closing in upon the circle of flickering light. They are not afraid, those children. The word is not in the Sagamore Hill dictionary. The spectacle of little Archie, hatless, guiding a stalwart Rough-Rider through the twilight woods, telling him to follow his white head and not be afraid of bogies,—they won’t hurt him,—is a joy to me forever. But when owls are hooting in the dark woods I like to hug the fire myself. It feels twice as good then. |
| When the stars shine out in the sky overhead, they stretch themselves with their feet to the fire, roll up in their blankets, and sleep the untroubled sleep of the woods. The sun, peeping over the trees, finds them sporting in the cool, salt water; and long before the day begins for the world of visitors they are back home, a happy, roistering crew. |
| The Roosevelts have found (if they have |