Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 442
| unhappy lunatics in the city’s hospitals; for a farm where the boys in the House of Refuge might be fitted for healthy country life; for responsible management of the State’s Orphan Asylums, for decent care of vagrants, for improved tenements. In all he did he was sensibly practical and wholesomely persistent. When he knew a thing to be right, it had to be done, and usually was done. With all that, he knew how to allow for differences of opinion in others who were as honest as he. Those who were not, expected no quarter and got none. |
| Mr. Roosevelt’s good sense showed him early that the problem of pauperism with which he was battling could not be run down. It had to be headed off if the fight was to be won. So he became Charles Loring Brace’s most energetic backer in his fight for the children. He was a trustee of the Children’s Aid Society, and never in all the years missed a Sunday evening with the boys in the Eighteenth Street lodging-house which was his particular charge. He knew them by name, and was their friend and adviser. And they loved him. When he lay dying, they bought rosebuds with their spare pennies and sent |