Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.

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with them when it all comes right in the end. There should be a law to make all lovers happy in the end, and to slay all the villains, at least in the national capital. And then, nowadays, we go to the White House, and that is the best of all. I shall never forget the Christmas before last, when I told the President and Mrs. Roosevelt at breakfast of my old mother who was sick in Denmark and longing for her boy, and my hostess’s gentle voice as she said, “Theodore, let us cable over our love to her.” And they did. Before that winter day was at an end (and the twilight shadows were stealing over the old town by the bleak North Sea even while we breakfasted in Washington) the telegraph messenger, in a state of bewilderment,—I dare say he has not got over it yet,—brought mother this despatch:

	“THE WHITE HOUSE, Dec. 20, 1902.
	“MRS. RIIS, RIBE, DENMARK:
	“Your son is breakfasting with us. We send you our loving sympathy.
	“THEODORE AND EDITH ROOSEVELT.”
Where is there a mother who would not get up out of a sick-bed when she received a message

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