Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| His eyes fairly danced as he sat down to tell me of the trip. There was so much, he said, that it would take a month. And then, as in mind he went back over the thousands of miles he had traveled, the Sunday quiet of a little Kansas prairie town, and a picture from the service that brought the farmers in from fifty miles around, stood out among all the rest. The children came to his car to take him to church, and when the people had all been seated two little girls for whom there was no room stood by his pew. He took them in and shared his hymn-book with them, and the three sang together, they with their clear girlish voices, he with his deep bass. They were not afraid or embarrassed; he was just their big brother for the time. And there was the tenderness in his voice I love to hear as he told me of them. |
| “You should have seen their innocent little faces. They were so dainty and clean in their starched dresses, with their yellow braids straight down their backs. And they thanked me so sweetly for sharing the book with them that it was a hardship not to catch them up in one’s arms and hug them then and there.” |