Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| in the public interest, and wind up with the brisk “There is no other way, and it is right; we will do it;” and heard his critics, who had given the matter no attention or the most superficial, and were taking no risks, cry out about snap judgments, while Roosevelt calmly went ahead and brought us through. |
| Whether it was over this cattle matter or some other local concern that his misunderstanding with the Marquis de Mores arose, of which there have been so many versions, I have forgotten. It does not matter. In the nature of things it would have come sooner or later, on some pretext or another. The two were neighbors, their ranches being some ten or fifteen miles apart. The Marquis was a gallant but exaggerated Frenchman, with odd feudal notions still clinging in his brain. He took it into his head to be offended by something Roosevelt was reported to have said, before he had yet met him, and wrote him a curt note telling him what he had heard and that “there was a way for gentlemen to settle their differences,” to which he invited his attention. Mr. Roosevelt promptly replied that he had heard a lie; that he, the Marquis, had no business to |