Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 414
| over, his hearers go away, thinking. They know exactly what he meant, and, for the best of reasons—he did. I cannot think of a better prescription for speechmaking of the present day that is meant to convince. And no one ever winks when he speaks. |
| Another thing: he is all the time growing. The man who does not grow in the White House is not fit to be there. “A full-grown man who is growing still,” an Eastern newspaper that is not exactly a champion of Roosevelt called him after his Chamber of Commerce speech in New York. One of the brightest of the newspaper men who went with him on his long Western trip said to me, when they were back East: “I don’t think any sane man could be with him two weeks without getting to like him; but the thing that struck me on that trip was the way he grew; the way an idea grew in his mind day by day as he lived with it until it took its final shape in speech. Then it was like a knock-down blow.” |
| Then they express the man. Phrases like this: “It is the shots which hit that count,” and to the boys of his country: “Hit the line hard; don’t foul and don’t shirk, but hit the line |