Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 360
| “Never mind,” said the superintendent,— “never mind, we ’ll forgive and forget. It ’s Christmas! Go ahead, boys, and eat.” And six hundred pairs of knives and forks flashed, and six hundred pairs of jaws and six hundred tongues wagged all at once, until you could n’t hear yourself think. |
| But one of the lads, who had not taken his eyes from me, suddenly saw a light. He pointed his knife straight at me and piped out so that they all heard it: |
| “I know you! I seen yer pitcher in the papers. You ’re a P’lice Commissioner. You ’re—you ’re—Teddy Roosevelt!” |
| If a bomb had fallen into the meeting, I doubt if the effect would have been greater. A silence fell, so deep that you would have heard a pin drop—where, a moment before, the noise of a dray going over the pavement would have been drowned in the din. Glancing down the table where the little shavers sat, I saw a stealthy movement under cover, and the eight stolen pies appeared with a common accord over the edge and were replaced as suddenly as they had gone! |
| He laughed, when I told him of it, as I had |