Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 8
| “David Livingstone’s Travels and Researches in South Africa,” and demanding of every member of the family to be told what were “the foraging ants” and what they did. It was his sister, now Mrs. Cowles, who at last sat down in exasperation to investigate, that the business of the household might have a chance to proceed, for baby Theodore held it up mercilessly until his thirst for information was slaked. Whereupon it developed that the supposedly grim warriors of the ant-hill were really a blameless tribe—“the foregoing ants” in fact. We are none of us infallible. The “foraging ants” are a comfort to me when their discoverer is disposed to laugh at my ee-wee lamb that but for my foreign speech should have been a plain ewe. But, then, I dwelt content in the bliss of ignorance. He, explorer in baby petticoats, could not be appeased till he found out. |
| I suppose they called him Ted in those days. In my own time I have never found any one to do it who knew him, and the better they knew him the less liable were they to. You can tell for a certainty that a man does not know him when he speaks of him as “Teddy.” Not |